AshBringer Spotlight
by LyricaBelachium
Summary: AU OC centric -chapt9 -AshBringer leaves her friends behind and enters a new jounrey aboard Elita's ship, the femmes are curious about her but she is more interested in one of the femmes in special.
1. Do we have a deal?

Okay first thing's first, this is slightly based on the Blurr spot light, and its AU considering it has OCS and it follows one of their points of view.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

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Dust started to form in a thick line at the end of the road, the sun was setting giving it a hot aura.

"You know you really don't need me for this…" said Ratchet, the chief medical officer of Optimus Prime's team. "The youngling is going to scrap herself anyway!" he muttered in his usual grouchiness.

"That is precisely why I worry Ratchet…"

"Then why in Primus did you send her in the first place?! Honestly sometimes I just don't get you."

"You should know Ratchet…" Optimus surveyed the distance with a bit of unease. "You can't keep a speedster inside for very long."

The shining red and black paint of the Bugatti Veyron in the distance was becoming clearer by the klik.

Whoever was driving had no concern over the human speeding limits what so ever.

"Does she intend to slow down?" Ratchet said getting a little wary of the proximity between them. "slag it to the pit she's not!" just as the Bugatti reached its destination it jumped into the air into a fast and sleek display of cybertronian transformation, landing and halting abruptly right in front of the CMO who fell backwards on his aft trying not to get run over.

Ignoring his medical officer's foul protesting Optimus moved forth to receive the news.

"Soldier, report."

The young red and black femme seemed to snap into attention with his voice and got herself into a more correct and formal position to address him.

"Landing successful sir, autobots comfirmed:

Comunications officer Blaster, officer Inferno and agent Blurr, sir."

"Very well, where are they?"

"They were a bit tired from the journey sir and insisted I came ahead to inform you, they should be arriving soon."

"Primus another racer to fry my circuits!" Ratchet protested a little more loudly, Prime merely ignored him.

"None of them seem to be in need of big repairs sir." She completed waiting impatiently to be allowed to leave.

"Very well…"he said with a sigh eyeing the horizon again " You are dismissed."

"Thank you sir" she said quickly moving away from the two and into the refreshing shade of the base. She was in a foul mood, not only had it been an extremely hot journey _he _had to be one of the new arrivals. My spark nearly stopped when I saw his form rise out of the small shuttle.

"Hey Ashbringer!" I raised my head to see a well known friendly yellow mech coming up with a few data pads in a pile on his hands. " Your back already?"

"Oh…hey Bumblebee, yeah…its way too hot outside, my paint was actually starting to feel icky…"

"That bad huh?" he asked looking at the end of the hall behind me. "Listen, I just have to hand in these data pads, wanna come for some energon afterwards?" I smiled slightly, good old Bumblebee, he wasn't hitting on me or anything, oh no, we were far from a couple. We just had known each other from a very long time now and were good friends. Whenever I felt the need to race once in a while or to go out on a stroll he'd usually make me company, he was a speedster much like myself, but couldn't hope to catch up with me. However our intentions were never to win each other, we only wanted to have some fun at it.

I followed him to Prowl's office, Prowl was actually recharging with his head over his desk and a large pile of datapads still to be read. I cringed.

"I actually feel sorry for the poor guy" Bee confessed putting down the new stack next to the others. "he's been going on the fritz ever since we got the news of the new landing." I nodded in agreement as we left silently leaving him to rest.

"Your rather calm" he said as we had been slowly walking down the halls of the base. "Something on your processor?" I smiled slightly.

"How is it that you always know that?"

"Well if you weren't you'd be telling me all about your mission right about now and go into high detail on how you kicked someone's tin can." He said with a smug smile, I lightly punched him on the shoulder chuckling lightly, then I lose my smile again, I couldn't keep it up for long.

"So….are you going to tell me?" he asked rubbing his shoulder in mock hurt. I sighed, waiting as much as I could before having to admit it.

"His here…."

"Huh?"

"You remember my brother right?" he snorted.

"Hard to forget a mech like _him"_ I nodded in agreement. " so he's one of the new arrivals? Aren't you supposed to be happy about that?"

"Not really…"

"Well why not? Did you guys have a fight or something?" It was normal he didn't know, Bumblebee hadn't seen my brother in years, not ever since we were very very young.

"Sort of…" his optics narrowed.

"What happened?" I sighed.

"I don't really want to talk about it…" I stopped leaning onto the wall next to the rec room's door, no one seemed to be in there but I didn't want to go in anyway.

"I'll go get us the energon" he said entering the room, shortly after he came back and handed me the cube with the pink substance.

"thanks." I said as he nodded and sat down next to me, the hall was a bit dark which made it fresh.

"I know you don't really want to talk about it but maybe it would help you know? You are going to have to face him when he comes."

"I won't…"

"huh?"

"I won't have to face him" he gave me a puzzled look and I sighed once again. " I suppose it all started with him….like always."

We were still in peace at Cybertron, but the war had started to give its little warnings, they were signs of what was to come, however for my family unit at least, we just couldn't see that.

We were just one big happy family. Okay we weren't big and we weren't always that happy.

It was just me and my twin sister Aqua, at that time I went by the name of Flamer.

Our creators, made us as racing models although they had always insisted we shouldn't race, you see, back then, a femme racing, was an absurd idea.

We both had very similar forms, Aqua had a helmet with various platting going all the way back in round shapes, sort of like a sea shell, most of her figure was based on curves and subtle lines yet still had a very dynamic shape and two thrusters on her back, along with a special panel that we were still to learn how to work on, see we weren't even done growing up.. Her form was mostly deep blue and black. Unlike my sister though I wasn't all curves and subtle lines. My head plating instead of a round shell was more like a spiked shell, every small part of armour I had was more straightforward and brusque, giving me a far more dynamic look than my sister, but in the end we were just as fast as each other. Apart from that I also had a red and black paintjob and our personalities were practically opposite.

Then there was our older brother, who took care of us since our parent's mysterious murder. Yes we weren't in war but like any civilization there was murder here and then in history.

Our brother had light blue armour, was a bit taller than us and had the most perfect racer type body. He was our parent's pride and joy. A racer from the spark ever since the beginning. Primus I looked up to him like a hero every since the day I was brought to the world and onlined my optics. Once he was in a considerable age he was allowed into official races, and you know what? He won every last one of them, he never lost. He was soon known as the fastest mech in our planet, he was soon known as… Blurr.

I made a short pause on my story to take a long sip of my energon, Bumblebee hadn't said anything yet but that was okay with me, he knew this much.

Looking down at the liquid I had just drank from I continued with my story.

Now being an aspiring racer one would usually think that having the fastest mech as a brother would be purely awesome as the humans say. It wasn't.

Blurr had the same mentality everyone else had, and he intended to keep my creators' will.

"But WHY?!" I shrieked, it was just another argument as usual.

"Because you can't! Femmes weren't built for the official races! You can't keep up and its dangerous for you! Why can't you get that in your thick processor!?" he shouted back just as angry.

"Because I know I CAN race! Just give me one chance! That's all I need! Just ONE chance!" I begged, I was getting desperate; I didn't want the life I was leading.

"NO! And that's final! And if even try as to sneak into a race I'll personally get someone to chance your whole frame into one that can't race at all!" my jaw dropped, he couldn't be serious. " Is that clear?" his tone was icy, he was serious. I could only look down and nod slightly, clenching my fists out of frustration. "Good. Now I have to go, make sure you guys get to your jobs on time." I snorted at that as he left the room.

"S-sis…" Aqua called from the side, she had been on the couch listening to our conversation, and she was never the one to argue to Blurr, even though she wanted to race just as much as I did.

"I'm all right" I said heading over and flopping down next to her. "I just can't believe him! Out of all mechs he should be the one to understand this the most!"

"You know he only does that to protect us…"

"I know…but still…I don't want to live like this!" In fact, at the time, we both worked at a community centre, a bar by human terms. At the time it was one of the few jobs femmes actually could get, there wasn't much variety since we were always few to begin with and our forms usually couldn't keep up with the same work a mech could.

"I don't either but we really don't have many other options" she reasoned trying to calm me down through our spark bond. I let steam get our of my vents as a sigh.

"He's been getting more and more distant…" I said referring to our brother, looking away from her.

Aqua looked down at her hands and gave me a slight nod.

"Yes…he has…I heard some mechs from his repair team say he's been getting a big ego…" I smiled slightly at that.

"He always had a big ego"

"Yeah but I mean it this time. He doesn't seem to care about anyone and says things without thinking them over. It's starting to be the same with us."

"I wish there was some way to race…" I said sinking further into my seat. My sister patted my shoulder comfortingly and for a moment I wondered what I would ever do without her, I smiled and she smiled back.

"Come on, we should be going for work." I nodded and we left.

The day had been the usual. We never worked in shady looking places nor in the big ones like **the circle**.

Our shift was finally over and the streets already had their illumination on, however the way back home wasn't exactly the lightest area and we should have suspected something as soon as the first light went off.

But like I said, we weren't at war yet, we had no idea.

It took only one shot in front of our feet to get a jerk reaction, on instinct we jumped back and turned on any system that could give us speed to run away. We had no idea we could even do that, we just did it.

A few mechs were showing up from the shadows as the lights in the area started going off one my one leaving us in the darkness lightly lit by everyone's optics, these mechs all had red optics, while we both had blue optics, back than it was just a fashion choice really, so we didn't know these were future decepticons to be.

"My my my…what pretty little femmes we have here." A voice sneered, it was deep and it resonated with the mechs own armour which was about twice their size, he was easily the tallest in the group. I quickly stepped in front of my sister, out of the two I was always the one who stood up for her.

"Aw…how cute. But that won't get you anywhere."

"**Aqua, you run while I hold them off, get help"** I told her through our private com link. She gave me a look as if asking 'are you stupid?'.

"**There's no way I'm leaving you off with them! I'm staying!"** I inwardly sighed.

"**I can't beat them! I need you to go get help!"**There was no time for arguing though as the first mech came at us, he was mostly bulky, which made him ridiculously slow. We jumped out of the way leaving a small trail of dust to greet him.

"GO!" I shouted to aqua circling around the mech and jumping onto his large back, I was small but light, my thrusters gave me the needed boost to reach his shoulders as he tried to look back and I kicked him square in the jaw breaking it off. It flew sideways and off the path falling somewhere on a street a few feet down.

The mech tried to cry out in pain and I lost my balance falling off. My sister came out of nowhere grabbing my arm and pulling me out of the way just in time to avoid bearing a massive number of bullet holes.

I quickly regained my balance and started running besides her growling "I thought I told you to run!"

"And if I did that you would be nothing but scrap metal by now!" she shouted back just as angry, something rare on her. I knew she wasn't going to leave me.

The mechs came at us all at once now, but they were all either too slow or had absolutely no flexibility. We slid and zigzagged between them, avoiding shots that were starting to get more serious, one of them had actually pulled out a plasma riffle.

I took that one on, he was stupid enough to shoot at close proximity when I threw myself to the ground sliding under his large legs to the other side where it was safer, his shots pushed him back with the exploding force and he rolled on the ground in pain accidentally falling off the path and crashing on a lower street much like the jaw from the previous mech.

Soon enough we were starting to find ourselves actually having fun at this, the mechs had absolutely no chance of catching us and if we had wanted to we would have ran out of there and to safety. I wish we had done…

Soon there was a pile of groaning mechanisms in a poor state, mostly damaged by themselves and we stood before them just out of their flailing and weak reach.

" Well…that ought to do the trick…" I said proudly placing my hands on my hips and grinning mischievously at the mechs, my sister giggled happily feeling my enthusiasm.

"Not quite" a voice said, we turned to see one more mech standing there, he was purple and faded yellow and had the same red optics as the others, his helmet was black though and he had what looked like suspicious armour platting and weapons you wouldn't usually find on a mech. "I must say I'm impressed, that lot usually doesn't go down very easily, but you know, heavy armour isn't always the best sale on the market." He was playing with a small little ball in his hand glowing neon blue.

"I can't let you go unpunished though for destroying my valuable items though"

Was this mech serious? He was calling other mechs, actual sentient beings items. He looked thoughtfully at the ball in his hands.

"I guess I should clean up the mess then." He put down the little ball pressed a button and made it roll in our direction. " It was nice meeting you two." He said with a smirk, and took a device, in seconds he transwarped. We were however putting our full attention on the small ball rolling our way, our sparks sinking in realization, we didn't know much, but this much was obvious, we needed to run.

We didn't need to exchange words; we turned around and ran like the pit was after us.

Transforming whenever we had something in our way and then changing back to run as fast as possible.

"WE'RE NOT GONNA MAKE IT!" Aqua screamed in panic, energon flowing from her optics.

"OH THE PIT WE'RE NOT!WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT!" I shouted back, and just as I said that, the explosion took place, we felt the heat coming and were thrown forwards hitting against a building with more strength than it was desired.

Slowly the explosion resonance started to disappear and my audios stopped ringing, I looked to the side to see my sister was with me still online and shaking. We tried to stand but our legs were wobbily, Aqua actually threw up her morning fuel and was whimpering something even I couldn't understand. I just didn't have words.

"Well well well…I congratulate you" our sparks nearly froze, it was the same mech again, he had transwarped here of all places. " You managed to get out of the explosion site just in time. Such is the skill of racers."

I stood up in shaky legs; aqua was unable to process as far as I could tell.

"Who are you?! WHY THE PIT DID YOU DO THAT?! YOU COULD HAVE KILLED US!FRAG YOU KILLED THEM!" I said remembering the poor mechs we had beaten the slag out of.

He lifted up his hands as a sign of peace. "All drones I assure you, no real sparks inside those shells." Something about him made me think that was a complete lie but I wasn't about to accuse him in case he had another plasma bomb. The thing about plasma bombs was that they were incredibly dangerous and usually a suicide weapon. There was just no time for most to run away after setting it up. Speedsters were one of the few exceptions and you had to be incredibly good at it. Transwarping was just an expensive and cheater's way.

"I'm here to make a deal with you" he said calmly, his smirk never leaving his disgusting faceplates.

"What sort of deal?" I asked shaking, my sister looking at me horrified.

"**Have you lost all your logic circuits?!"** she shrieked through our bond.

" I'm in charge of a few races… I want you two to participate."

"What? Are you serious?!" I felt my sister's desperation to say no but I just couldn't help it. I got suspicious thought " what's in it for you?" he shrugged.

"Oh you know, the bets…there is a lot of profit coming from the illegal races, a lot of mechanisms are looking for someone who can beat the champion Blurr, where else than there?"

"What?!" my sister squeaked now a bit in anger. She was insulted of such idea, Blurr was like a hero for her and to much of my ego's injury, he was mine as well.

" Oh yes, and I believe you two are just who I was looking for such a job." This was my turn to step up and be difficult though.

"I thought you mechs didn't like femmes racing, saying we couldn't keep up." He sneered.

"and you believe that?" I was taken aback; this seemed like the sort of mech that would go to any end to get what he wanted. "I thought not. You see in official races you have no chance of getting in, however in the illegal racing…" he trailed off.

"You know who we are don't you?" I accused him. He chuckled amused.

"Of course, however I promise you complete secrecy of your identities will be respected. You were not very easy to find out to begin with, no one has any idea you two are related to the champion, despite his fame." Aqua seemed sad at that but I held my ground. "All we need to do is change your designations for the races and you two can be our new champions. How about it? The Champion femme duo in cybertron history. You want to be free don't you?"

Primus he had hit the right buttons as the humans say. Even aqua was convinced, it was exactly what we both desired, and despite every nagging feeling in my spark telling me not to, we shook hands, and sealed the deal.

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That's the first chapter of the ashbringer spotlight. I have the third written down so I'll see if I can write the second now, if so two more chapters should be up soon.

Please review.


	2. Conditional Freedom

Thank you to whoever might be reading this. I got hits so someone must have read it so far, so that's enough reason for me to go on.

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It happened that that mech's name was Swindle, and he got us a pretty juicy deal, the race was simple, be fast, avoid obstacles, and then the part we feared the most, the arena.

From time to time there would be an arena in the middle of the race, since there were so many competing mechs in illegal races that was a fastest way to take some down.

I had to admit, we were extremely hesitant towards this.

Fortunately this all took place around night time, so Blurr was either busy with his own affairs or home resting from a hard core party or a race, most of the time being the parties.

We were thankful for that because that's how we managed to sneak out on our first race.

My spark kept beating in anxiety, united with my sister's. We were dead set on this now. It didn't matter the fragger tried to blow us up. He had been testing our speed, we wanted to race. Nothing was going to stop us now.

We arrived at the meeting point, the mech was there, that disgusting smile of his on his faceplates like always, Primus I should have known better.

"My my….you two actually came. One would usually think femmes to back out by now." I glared at him making him actually take a step back.

"Wanna test that theory?"

"Antsy aren't we? Very well you have your reasons." He said walking over to us and handing each a metallic card, it was a fake ID I raised my eyebrow, we still had no names. Swindle noticed my surprise. " Ah yes, we still didn't get you your designations, you see here the public chooses your designation depending on how well you fair out there."

"I see…" Aqua said sounding a bit interested.

"So, what's the circuit like? You are going to give us a map right?" he sneered.

"No such thing here, there are indicators on the way, leading you along."

"Are you serious?! Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?!"

"Oh? You're not up to it? Fine, you can go back to your home, run along back to your big brother, live in his shadow won't you?"

My fists tightened to the point I thought I was going to dent my own hand.

"Stop using our brother as a mean to get us to race for you!" Aqua said standing next to me defensively. She knew this was exactly the kind of torment I couldn't take. " Come on Flamer, we're leaving" she said glaring at the mech with distaste. I wouldn't budge though. " Flamer?"

"Aqua….just this once…only this once…please…I don't mind if you don't want to race, but please…let me do this…" she stared back at me with some sadness, she knew exactly what went through my spark. It was something I just couldn't hold in anymore. I had to be free.

She tightened her grip on my shoulder plate.

"If you race, I race. We're in this together." I stared back at her, sending all my thanks, all my gratitude over our bond.

"Welllll….that was all very touching and all but I have to go, you know, money doesn't wait. Your up at door five." He said pointing in the direction we had to go.

We exchanged a glance, and that was all we needed to be sure we each wanted this, and we stepped out into the field we were born to cross.

We stepped out to find a massive crowd outside, booing and shouting unpleasant things for us to even dare enter the race. They clearly didn't like to see femmes there.

The actual femmes in the crowd were either shocked or smirked as if thinking we were the stupidest of our kind.

I turned to my left to see the other contestants were mostly twice our size and all snickered upon seeing us.

Aqua took my hand, I looked at her surprised and she gave it a squeeze and a reassuring smile. She was always the one to give me my confidence back, she always supported me. And in return I smiled that which made her so happy. We stared back at the road just as the siren rang, we took off.

Everyone was baffled, we simply laughed it off, the other mechs were left behind in a trail of smoke, we weren't even using our thrusters, no one could compare to our speed. I jumped with my sister high in to the air passing over some of the deadliest obstacles I had seen, we lifted our hip's flaps gaining more stability in the air. In that one moment, we felt free, we felt we could do whatever we wanted to, but most of all, we felt we were doing what really mattered.

Finally the arena came into view, our worry started to approach us again. Once there the doors behind us closed and a board appeared adding up the points we got for getting there first. We waited a few seconds until another pair of mechs entered the arena, their names and points appeared on the chart.

We shared uncertainty but it didn't last long, they lunged at us, but we outmanoeuvred them trying to avoid getting hit while figuring out how to bring these big guys down. Plus they were no where as slow as the ones we met when swindle came to us, they still had some speed.

"**Sister! We're loosing time! What are we going to do?!"**

"**I don't know! Any ideas how to take them down?"**

"**Just one! If we hit their legs we should be able to disable them from fighting and racing at the same time."**

"**and how do you intend on doing that?!"**

"**Can you make a frontal attack?"**

"**WHAT?!"**

"**Just trust me!"**

"**Fine…"**

"**Okay, follow my lead!"**

I stood back to give her some space, my sister ran directly to the circular walls and used its curve to run horizontally, I understood what she was doing, the two mechs made an attempt to grab her, since running on walls didn't give you much space to run to except forwards. They were wrong however, I put myself into position waiting. When the time came my sister turned her thrusters the other way around and the balanced her in another direction, allowing her to run upwards. The two mechs, who had been too focused on catching her didn't seem me at the end where they were about to crash to. I ducked preparing the wheels on my heels for the force I was about to take and activated the only weapon I had, my flamethrowers. I only used them for meagre things like heating energon and other things, this however was different. I let them reach a reasonable level and flames shot out hitting the two mechs legs. They tried to stop themselves but couldn't and the flames engulfed their legs, burning away wires and melting them. As soon as their legs were starting to give in I jumped at one of them landing on his face with my feet and throwing him back. My sister who was coming down from her upwards run fell on the other's head throwing him forwards.

And with that the two mechs went down. There was a roar from the crowds. It actually felt good, really good. They were cheering our victory, no longer insulting or scowling. It was at this time we thought we found where we belonged.

The doors opened again and we lost no time.

The finish line was ours for the taking, there were loads of mechs and especially femmes congratulating us now, wanting to shake servos.

Swindle came and practically dragged us to the small stage they had set up, he used a device to make his voice processor louder.

"Fellow citizens! Our new champions of free racing!" he raised my sister's fist in triumph " CliffStrider!" there was a roar of applause and he lifted my own fist. " and AshBringer!"

We laughed all the way back home, re-telling the whole thing to each other with excitement. We really felt alive for once. Our servos were a bit stiff now because we hadn't raced for so long, but it was a good feeling. I inserted the code for the door and looked up to the living room still laughing with my sister, but I stopped abruptly at the schene before me.

"Flamer?" Aqua asked from behind me, walking over to see as well, she gasped and covered her mouth though.

In the living room was our brother on the couch, looking as infatuated on high-grade as the femme on his lap was for him.

The two stared at us, and we stared back. Actually, I was glaring. It was evident what went on.

"Hey! Where have you two been? You missed all the show!" Blurr said in a slurred and glitched voice. He tickled the femme's chin and she chuckled at him caressing his armour.

I felt sick to my spark core just seeing them. Aqua went past me; I just stood at the door staring menacingly at the femme.

"I'm sorry you have to leave." She told the femme who stared back at her with a chuckle and turned back to my brother with an exaggerated sweet voice.

"Who are these girls? Certainly not your personal entertainments are they? They don't have the necessary model for that" she asked him referring to our body shape. Sure we weren't the prettiest in the assembly line but that was because of our functions.

To my complete disgust Blurr just laughed. Aqua had enough though, she slapped him sending a small bit of his cheek plate across the room, he stared to the side dumbfounded while she yanked the femme off of him and out the door, the foul creature screeching at her and saying not very pleasant things. She took her out.

Blurr slowly took a hand to his cheek and turned back to me, he was stunned. I just glared at him sadly, feeling the energon threatening to fall from my optics. I turned my back on him and walked out just as my sister was going back in.

" Sis?" she asked but I didn't answer. I needed out.

I sped away, knowing she was following me. She tried many times to calm my spark, but it took all night driving around the city until my nerves were finally going away.

I sat at the edge of a bridge staring down at the city, my sister finally dared to come up to me and sat down besides me. We sat there in silence.

"Lets go home…" she finally said.

We returned in the morning to find the house empty, a data pad with a note on the living room table.

"Sorry"

Blurr

* * *

Yeah, a bit sad, but I do have to base it off the jerk Blurr was in the beginning of the spot light. I really like the relationship between these two twins, there is no aqua without flamer, or ashbringer without cliffstrider.

Anyway the third chapter ended up being 4th is I decided to input here another schene to the drama! Heheheh review please!


	3. The signs of War

This chapter is short but it has very important things that I just couldn't put in the previous and next chapter because they'd be too long. Anyway hope you enjoy.

* * *

I waited to see my friend's reaction, Bumblebee had kept quiet the whole story, he had a look of slight anger now, he was thinking over the subject. Our energon had gone cold long ago.

"If you want me to stop I can stop…"

"No, its okay, go on, what happened after that?"

"Well…."

Blurr avoided to bring anyone home at all costs after that, and there were two reason's to do so: one was not to upset his little sisters anymore, the second was because the next morning after the incident, at the check up, he found out the femme had actually tried to sabotage his armour because the repair mechs found some of my parts getting loose and that was exactly where she had been er….petting him.

That day though had not been his best. He was called in by the head of the racing championship. This was either really good or really really bad. Since he had won every single race in the season he thought it was actually a good thing, but once he entered the badly lit room he was an idiot to still think that.

There was a screen showing racers in the streets, I frowned, who would go down to the level of street racing? Just mechs who couldn't keep up with the official races of course.

"Ah Blurr" he said. His optics turning to me. I stared up at the screen in question. "annoying isn't it?" he said motioning for the screen. "I called in because of that. You see lately we've been getting less mechanisms coming to see our races, they say the illegal street racing is much more exciting, especially because of their recent champions apparently." He snorted " Disgusting really who would have thought they would get two puny femmes to play as champions? Its all stage I tell you, no real racing in it."

"Femmes?" I snorted as well, it was ridiculous, no femme could beat a mech in racing, and it certainly wasn't interesting watching them run.

"Yeah, that's why I called you, I need you to go out there, infiltrate the races and show those mechs who's fastest and where the real racing is at."

"Who am I running up against?"

"I managed to get swindle to get you against his champions themselves. Here, I'll show you their Bios" the screen changed to the two profiles. His optics widened, his spark seemed to stop in time much unlike his personality. There he stood in a dark room, staring at his two sisters in a screen.

It felt better and better each day, and we secretly talked about new moves for our races during work, always impatiently desiring for the day to end so that we could go.

We had however to keep a low profile, especially because brother was home much less now. Secretly we wondered sometimes. In our wild fantasies we sometimes imagined how it would be like if he was sneaking into the crowds and watching us race. But that was just a dream.

We didn't mind though, he was happy in his own world, and we were happy in ours, it was just a pity we couldn't all share it.

We secretly went to get upgrades every now and then, my sister insisted I should get better flamethrowers but where was I going to get _that? _Anything more powerful than this was strictly forbidden or army restricted.

Only the guards and other mechs such as them had clearance to buy those.

We talked to Swindle about it, and that was when I started suspecting of him.

He managed to get us a deal for it, actually not only one, many of them. He had a whole storage full of things such as weapons and higher level armour. It was, to say in the least, suspicious.

I had ten flame thrower models to pick out, and what was even more suspicious was that I didn't have to pay for it. Swindle said he was just investing.

He actually convinced my sister to get air blasters, which basically were just as flamethrowers but used the air as a weapon, if condensed enough and with enough force it could hit with the strength of a bullet and cut like the sharpest blade.

I got six new sets of flamethrowers for myself.

Initially they hadn't been manufactured for femmes so we had to do a few changes but in the end it was all done and ready for use. I had flamethrowers one in each arm and leg, and added the two remaining ones on my thrusters to get more lifting power.

My sister did just about the same, although the ones on her legs were to accelerate her weels.

All in all we were geared and looked as innocent as before because these types of weapons didn't necessarily occupy much space in the first place. Brother wouldn't suspect a thing.

All the time I kept wondering where swindle got all those shady looking merchandises, some of them looked like dismembered limbs actually…or like they had been ripped off.

I didn't think too much of it though at the time, I was having too much time, and thinking the possibility of those upgrades belonging to someone else was just…well it wasn't a natural idea back then.

We avoided at all costs the public and fans but it was starting to get harder to do so.

That day we arrived late as usual, only to be surprised to see our brother already home, drinking energon on his usual seat calmly, he seemed the have been thinking intensely.

"Oh! Blurr! Your early, we weren't expecting you to come home so soon." Aqua said heading over to hug him from the back, all possible hurt feelings from the other day seemed gone for her.

"Am I really always that late?" he asked with very little emotion in his voice.

"Most of the time. What made you quit the parties tonight?" I asked sitting down next to him, Aqua quickly sitting on the other side. He sighed, a very very long sigh… he looked…disturbed.

"Is it because of what's happening?" Aqua asked. The war had finally started lately; very little signs were coming everywhere, mechanisms were afraid to get out of home. It wasn't safe. That surely had to affect the races as well in a way and this of course meant Blurr was affected as well. Now he might be a total glitch most of the time and acted like he didn't even care about us but we knew deep down he didn't mean it. It was just his way of being himself; after all he had to raise us since we were very young.

"What?" he asked surprising us both.

"Well you know…Cybertron is changing…we can't trust anyone anymore." I said trying to explain. Of course, how could I forget, to blurr HE was the news, there was no other news.

"Oh…yeah…right…that" he said waving it off like he had a processor ache. "Where were you two anyway?"

"Oh!We were er…"

"We were partying ourselves. You're not the only one that likes to enjoy life, besides if we stay cooped up in this apartment all the time we'll stay single for all eternity." I glared at my sister for such a repulsive lie but Blurr seemed to buy it for now because he didn't question us.

We left him to his thoughts, but something kept nagging at me, he was acting out of character. And that was worrying me.

Day by day things seemed to get worse, Blurr had completely gone into his own little world, he was rarely home, and when he was he was recharging from high grade.

I'd usually say " at least his not fancying some pretty femme this time" and snort at my own comment.

Races had started to change for us as well, they were more violent, mechs becoming more desperate, dirtier tricks were showing and someone had actually killed another the other day.

We didn't worry about ourselves, we knew we wouldn't fall that low, but we weren't idiots, we paid attention to that.

It was a pity that wasn't enough.

I stopped again, the next part made my spark ache just knowing the memories were coming, it was spark breaking, it made me remember the void sensation inside of me.

If I were human I'd swallow hard.

Bumblebee seemed to notice.

"If your not ready to-"

"No…please…I … I need to get this out of my system…" energon tears had unwillingly started to fall. I sniffled a bit trying to recompose myself and continue my story.

"All right" he said. " Whenever your ready."

I nodded.

"That day came…"

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Review please 


	4. Regret of a Life Time

finally I was longing to put up this chapter, bring out the tissues becouse this is one of the saddest most heart wrenching things I've written!

This will be even stronger if you read it while hearing the Revenge of the Fallen score (SCORE not soundtrack)

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Times couldn't have been better, Brother thought we quit the racing idea and we were frequent winners of the illegal racing, winning every single race and match, quite honestly I had never been happier in my life! And although Aqua would often say it was wrong to be lying to brother and that it was even worse we were racing in illegal competitions I knew that she was just as happy as I was. We were finally free.

All of those times we worked as a team, watching each other's back, speeding side by side, fearing nothing. That was until …that day…

"What? They are actually asking you to infiltrate the illegal races and to snitch them out?" I asked perplexed, I could immediately feel my sister's distress over our bond but told her to keep quiet and act normally.

If Blurr cought on to our distress, we were officially offline.

"Yes, so I'll be getting home later tonight, I'm sure you two won't mind? You can handle yourselves by now."

"Er...sure…no problem!" I said trying to sound casual. " By the way….where exactly are you headed?" I felt a tug in my sparkbond as if my sister was telling me I was going too far.

Blurr gave me a look which clearly meant he was wondering whether or not he should tell us. I shrugged trying to seem uninterested.

"You don't have to tell me, but if anything _were_ to happen I'd like to at least know where to call for you." That seemed to have convinced him, and my sister's apprehension decreased, we were still not out of the heat though.

"I'm not sure" he turned back to his datapad, the report he had about his own systems, he often had to make those check ups on himself to make sure he was in proper conditions to race. Though that was hardly necessary since he was the fastest cybetronian in history. "Somewhere around the west neighbourhood I think."

Inwardly I was making a huge effort not to relax at that, tonight's race was on the east side of the city, so we were safe from being found out.

He put down the datapad and headed out.

"A-are you going somewhere?" I asked, he seemed rather distant today, as if he was daydreaming. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad one.

"I'm going to train. Aqua you want to come? I heard Nightracer was coming this morning." My sister immediately cheered and I had to suppress a groan, she was completely love sick for that mech, well…every femme was…

"Sure! Just hold on a minute" she said dashing for her quarters. Blurr stood there staring the direction she went for a while.

"Your sister is a very delicate femme." He said to me, I nodded in agreement. "Make sure you always protect her…" I was a bit surprised by that, and gave him a questioning look.

"What makes you think I wouldn't?" he didn't answer, nor did he react, sometimes I couldn't figure out my own brother.

"Your Rash Flamer, sometimes you don't think about things and drag her along. Make sure you do" For a moment I wondered if he knew we were racing behind his back, but I shook that thought away, if he knew he probably would be scolding us already, not warning me, and definitely not taking aqua along to his training. He never took me along though, he knew I'd be tempted to race. I stared away with regret, I didn't like lying to my brother, but he wouldn't allow me to be me, he didn't like me for being me…in the end I just wanted him to accept me.

"Are you certain you don't have anything to tell me?" his voice asked in the background of my mind. I rubbed my forehead platting and nodded.

"Yeah….sure" I heard him sigh as my sister came back to join him.

Later that night we waited to make sure he really wasn't coming back home early and snuck out, armour plating ready and thrusters just dying to be activated. We silently made our way to the new arena.

As usual a lot of mechs and femmes were watching, the number of femmes had actually increased thanks to our success and were all rooting for us unless their bonded was in the race.

Here we were no longer Aqua and Flamer, here we were Cliffstrider and Ashbringer, the speeding duo.

There was only one rule me and my sister agreed to follow, and that was we wouldn't kill anyone in these races.

Yes I had gained my new name because of my voracity and merciless battle style but I never once extinguished a spark, nor did I intend to.

We were waiting in our designated spot, stretching out servos to get rid of the stiffness from the day, we were itching for a good race tonight, the shouting and rooting only pumped up our excitement.

"Well well well, I see my lovely femmes are ready for tonight?" we turned at the same time to lay optics on swindle, the one in charge of the races so far, there were a lot of shady rumours about him, far too many to actually know which were true and which were fake, Cliffstrider used to say he probably did all of them. "I'm counting on you two tonight! We have a mystery racer competing and everyone is betting on you two. Make them proud and make me rich." He said patting our shoulder encouragingly. I rolled my optics whilst my sister tried to smile but it was completely fake.

We knew all the guy cared was for himself but if he got us a good race we had nothing against him.

"This mystery racer" cliffstrider started.

"Is he good?" I finished staring at the challenge we had to run in a few minutes.

"I don't know, I have never seen him, like most of you he must have changed armour, but he's probably not even worth your worry."

"Why is that?" my sister asked trying to figure out what the mech's intentions really were.

"Oh you know, the typical mech that switches armour to look as much as he can like the champion Blurr." Both of us stiffened at that, we did not need this tonight. Not tonight! What if this really was brother?

"Are you sure it really isn't him?" I asked coldly, trying to sound not too close to the mech we spoke of.

"My dear what would a champion want to do in an illegal race? He already has all he wants in the official races."

"We er…"

"We heard rumours that he's coming" I said before cliffstrider would make any mistake, she was far too easy to figure out due to her shyness.

"Oh? And may I ask where did you get this sort of juicy information?"

"None of your busyness just make sure it ain't him. Otherwise we won't race." I deadpanned, I saw a glint of anger in his optics, he did not like the situation at all.

"Are you scared you'll loose to him?" That seemed to snap something inside me, my optics widened for a short moment in surprise and then slit in pure anger gaining their purplish tint for a moment. Swindle lifted his hands up in a sign that he didn't want to fight. "woah, I'm just saying, it sounds like your afraid to loose to the fastest cybertronian."

Cliffstrider was watching between us nervously, she knew what was going on through my spark, she knew what I was thinking. Beating brother was all I wanted; I wanted to prove to him that femmes could race just as much as mechs could, I wanted more than anything to take of that smug smile of his whenever he proved he was fastest. Not to get me wrong, I loved my brother just as much as my sister, but we always had this friction between us.

"Fine" I finally said turning my back on him and walking to my spot to wait, I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone, not even my sister and she knew that for she went to her spot next to me without saying a word and looking at the ground sadly. Unlike me she just wanted to race, she didn't find blurr as a challenge; she merely enjoyed the adrenaline of it all.

The usual sponsor's voice rang out through the whole area alerting everyone to get into their alt modes and ready to start. We both transformed and revved our engines out of pure anxiety. We needed this.

If I had ever known what was to come, I would have never raced in my life.

The siren rang through our audio receptors and we sped out, zooming like streaks of colours far too fast for some mechs to follow with their optics. Our race line was soon to meet with every other racer, it was time to meet our foes.

A whole set of cybertronian vehicles set into place miraculously not crashing into each others. The first thing we did was try to find the supposed to be fake blurr but there were so many contestants today that we just couldn't spot him and keep concentrated in our race at the same time.

The first obstacles were easy but as usual many of the contestants stayed behind or crashed, we were now nearing the first arena.

"**Ashbringer?"** My sister called through our com link.

"**Yeah?"** I could sense her fear but she was trying to hide it.

"**Think we can quit? Just this once?"** her fear increased as she waited for my answer, I was shocked. She actually wanted to give up on a race? We hadn't lost so far! I tried to keep my cool however.

"**Why do you want to quit? Aren't you having fun?"**

"**Well yeah…its just that…I have this really bad feeling today…"**

"**Your just feeling that way because of what we heard from Blurr, don't worry, he said he was headed to the other side of the city, he can't possibly be competing here! And this isn't the first time we see a rookie trying to look like him."**

"**I know but….its not just Blurr…I really have this bad feeling…"** I inwardly sighed, if my sister didn't want to race I wasn't about to force her to, I hated myself for doing this.

"**Fine…"** Her cheerfulness spiked contagiously and I actually started feeling better **"If your so antsy about all this then I suppose we can let it go just this once…"**

However just as I said this a metallic wall shot from the ground separating the two of us, I was shocked at first trying to realise what had happened. On the otherside of me another wall had also lifted. I instantly felt my sister's fear. I stopped and tried to reverse out of there.

"**Ashbringer!Are you allright?! Whats going on?!"**

"**I don't know! Pull up and reverse! We're getting out of here, I'll meet you at the other end!"** However once I started to move back someone started shooting at the ground behind me and I had to abruptly stop. I heard a screech of tires on the other side that probably meant the same happened to my sister.

I looked up and saw a few mechs on top of the walls with guns pointed at me motioning for me to move forward. They weren't going to let me pass. I transformed into my bipedal mode and tried to bypass their shooting but whenever I did I'd nearly get hit, these guys weren't kidding.

"**Cliffstrider, I can't get through!"**

"**Neither can I! Their shooting at me!"**

"**Yeah me too, I guess we have no choice but to go on"**

"**What?! But we never fought in the arena by ourselves! I don't know how to fight without you!"**

"**Calm down! I'm just as scared as you are but do you rather get shot? I doubt these guys have much patience they'll be shooting us towards the arena soon enough!"** And just as I said that the mech did indeed start shooting. **"Just play along for a while! Once we're done with this fight we should meet on the racing line again."**

"**A-allright…I'll see you then"**

"**Yeah….see you"**

I entered the part of the race that was my second favourite, the fighting, I actually enjoyed it although I would never admit that to my sister, but I had a feeling she knew.

As I entered the usual scanners passed over me and I felt a small tingling sensation but shook it off, it was probably my nerves. I had yet to fight on my own, this was the first time.

I stepped into the round street to see a purple femme on my right staring at me, I hadn't seen her before but then again she had been of cliffstrider's side, I payed attention to the other one.

It was all a matter of speed and a right hit in these battles, as soon as we layed optics on each other, we ran and collided in a frenzy of fast movements dodges and hits. I was surprised to find this femme was good, and it was just fuelling my adrenaline.

We had equivalent height, there for our strength was also similar. Even our speed seemed alike; however this femme lacked taste and skill in her battle moves.

Through my bond I felt my sister was facing a worthy adversary, but she had one thing I hadn't: fear. I could feel each blow she suffered and it was painful. I wanted to help her! Primus I just wanted to be by her side again! We were never separated! And here I was alone and in one of the worse conditions possible.

"**Sister! I can't beat this! It hurts too much!"**

"**Hold on Cliffstrider!I'm coming!"** I said increasing the strength of my blows, even if they dented my armour I'd do anything to get to my sister right now, her distress was intoxicating.

I felt her sudden pain and bucked holding onto my stomach, the femme in front of me did just about the same but on the ground since I had just hit her around there somewhere as well.

I knew this was a battle of wills; I had to take this femme down. I threw myself at her snarling and doing as much as I could, I could feel my sister screaming mentally through our bond, I could feel her pain, fear, agony, her desire to be with me again. Primus I promised I'd protect her, and I'd do anything for that, even if it meant…..even if it meant…" I closed my optics, my flame thrusters in the arms activating, I slammed my fist into the femme's abdomen and blasted the fire into her circuitry. Then I felt my sister, her pain was so intense I fell back trying to push away whatever pain had also hit me. I screamed along with the two femmes, I didn't know how long it lasted but finally the screams subsided, and along with their silence, there was no cliffstrider. Regaining my rational consciousness but still dizzy from the pain I tried to reach out to her, only to feel nothing, hear nothing, I feared the worse.

"**Cliffstrider?"** The com link only gave me static, my panic increased and I tried harder to reach out to her but felt nothing. **"Cliffstrider answer me!" **for as much as I called, my sister didn't answer me. I stared down at the ground, shaking, I looked up at the femme that held me back for so long, and my spark almost extinguished, her figure was fizzling frequently, underneath the purple colouring I could see a different form, a blue and black femme with a figure much like my own.

Everything was making sense to me now. I slowly approached the femme, the holograph fizzling out completely when I did, there stood my sister, killed by my own hands energon dripping our of her offline optics and a burn hold through her abdomen, her armour heavily dented some of it actually missing.

"Cliff….strider…" I fell to my knees in front of her, I couldn't understand, I didn't want to understand…my sister… "cliff….cliffy?" I tried desperately shaking her shoulder armour gently, she didn't respond. "Cliffy? Come on its me…please…wake up…please…" energon started to unknowingly slide down from my own optics as I stared at her prone form. I realised with immense pain, what had happened. I couldn't hold it in anymore.

"CLIFSTRIDER!!!!!!!" my howl of pain echoed through out the entire arena I was sure, but I didn't care, I wanted to reach to her, Primus I'd do anything to feel her warm spark.

"What is going on here?! You have to get on the race!" I heard him, Swindle again, I heard his disgusting voice, I tightened my fists, trying to hold back and raised to my feet, not taking my optics off my sister.

"You planned this? You planned to make us fight each other?" I asked venomously, I couldn't help it, my whole body shook violently, my flame thrusters dying to turn on.

"My dear it was only a matter of time, everyone wanted to know which of the two of you was best, and I must say you fulfilled my expectations, young Cliffstrider didn't stand a chance…such a pathetic display…" I snapped, I turned around and what swindle saw were blazing red optics dripping energon and a vicious expression that promised death.

That night, everyone found out that I'd live up to my name as Ashbringer. My flame thrusters lit and I knew very little of what I was doing, I attacked everything and anyone in my way, burning everything to the ground. I didn't care who I hurt, who would miss the ones I took down, whose spark hurt the most as I broke through every last one of them, all I wanted was for them to feel the same pain they put me through, all I wanted was for them to hurt even more than my dear sister had. I wanted revenge.

Roaring in pure fury I killed spark after spark. Everyone panicked, if anyone survived, they were extremely lucky.

When I came to, I was staring at a burn wall; he mark of a mech's body was surrounded by ash. I stared at it, half conscious now that most of my anger was gone, I just felt pain, despair, and most of all…guilt…

It was I that had brought my sister into this place, selfishly wanting her to be with me and participate on such a dangerous adventure.

My sweet sister…

My body finally seemed to realise how much energy I had lost and my knees buckled. I crashed into the mass of bodies, I could see the piles and piles of mechs and femmes there and at the far distance someone was standing.

At first I couldn't really make it out, my processor wasn't functioning right, then I started recognizing the light blue armour, the figure I had looked up to so many times, looking back at me with sad optics, an ashamed expression.

"b-brother…" I managed to call lightly, but it was impossible that he could even hear me. He turned away, and like his name, disappeared in a blur.

Realising I still had my brother I tried to reach out to him, seek some kind of comfort, somewhere to hide from the cruel truth, only I was pushed back, he wouldn't accept my presence anymore. My brother… had abandoned me.

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oh boy....*sniffle* I feel emotional lol. god I dunno what when on through my head. hope you liked it. review! :)

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	5. Rescue

Muahahaha chappie 5 :D enjoy.

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Bumblebee looked sick with disgust, he had seen Blurr as a respectful mech and looked up to him as a role model many times being a speedster himself.

"What happened after that?" he asked as Ironhide passed by, greeting the two with a vague nod and entering the rec room. Once the doors closed I pointed to where he went.

"He found me."

I heard noise, it sounded like metal dragging metal, someone was probably trying to clear out the bodies.

I hadn't blacked out, for as much as I wanted I just couldn't recharge or enter a stasis cycle. It hurt too much to let myself rest.

I heard a faint voice.

"I found one!" it was gruff and it sounded somewhat excited to have found a survivor.

She felt herself being sat up and onlined her optics to stare coldly at a black armoured mech, clearly from the elite guard. At the distance there was another mech, about the same size but with a red and white paintjob, he hurried over once he heard the black mech's voice but tripped on a body and went sliding down a pile of ruined parts and shells. There were just so many casualties.

"Hey kid" The black mech said to get my attention "You feelin' allright? Can you hear me?" I nodded slightly looking back at the mass destruction from all around. What had I done…? The streets were not only filled with the dead, they were torn apart, blasted, broken…. It looked like a war zone.

"I need you to tell me who did this" he said, his cerulean optics gazing at me intensely. I tried to say it but no sound was coming out.

"Was it Decepticons?" I thought for a moment, I had heard the name somewhere…but where? Anyway it didn't matter… I shook my head as a no and he raised an optic ridge in question.

"Then who did all this?!" he gripped my shoulders tightly, he was desperate for an answer.

"I-I did…."I managed to cry out, my voice sounding glitched. The mech's optics widened in shock and he retreated his hands from my shoulders, I wasn't surprised, I felt disgusted with myself. What would my sister think of me? A pang of enormous guilt hit me and I couldn't help but whimper in self pity, pulling up my injured legs up to my chest and hugging them trying to block out any possible thoughts on the matter.

The second mech finally reached up to us and immediately knelt down to assist me only to be stopped by the black mech.

The newcomer gave him a glare but he simply glared back meaning he was serious.

"Is this true? You killed all these mechanisms?" I flinched at the word 'killed' but nodded.

"Who helped you?" His tone had gone down; it was intimidating, and cold, foreign. I felt scared, but I didn't care if I got slagged, I deserved it.

"No one…no one helped." There was silence. I started feeling my tears coming back and tried to push them away to no avail. I noticed my forearms and legs were smoked from the flamethrowers, they were completely busted.

"How….Why?!" was the mechs shaky question, it held a lot of anger in it.

"They made me kill her...I…I lost it….I completely lost it when I saw her body…" He looked just about ready to throw in some muscle when the red ad white intervened.

"Who made you kill who youngling?"

"Swindle…" I said with a venomous tone, my optics flashing purple for a second "he used a hologram over her so that I would think she was someone else. I felt her get hurt and thought her own battle was going to kill her so I lost it, I killed her without knowing it…" I stared at the vast sea of bodies, trying vaguely to see my sister's body somewhere in there, but I didn't of course.

"So the deceptcicons were in this after all" the black mech growled menacingly.

"The spark shock must have triggered her survival systems." Ratchet suggested nearing me with caution and starting to fix one of my arms. "However I have to ask, what were you doing on the ring? You are far too young to even be in illegal racing, how old are you?"

"Old enough to know how to race" I answered shrugging. "which was what I was doing, they divided us though, we never work solo, we always were a pair." Putting things in past sentences was getting harder by the minute and I had to hold myself back from falling apart.

"Wait…you were racing in there?" The black mech questioned coming back from his internal cursing of swindle.

"Yeah…"I said with a ghost of a smile.

"Any idea of what happened to the twin champs? We were ordered to get them before this madness started" I felt my spark still for a second, well there couldn't be any worse than what happened, and I really had no idea what to do, if I was going to be arrested then I deserved it.

"Your looking at one" both mechs stared back at me startled.

"Then…your sister was…"

"My twin, Cliffstrider." I said with a nod " Swindle said the crowd wanted to know which of us was best. That's why he did this…I'm sorry…I didn't…" I tried to regain my words but nothing was coming out.

"Then your Flamer" the medic said, sparks were coming out from the arm he was fixing. His attention back full on the injuries. I looked at him mildly surprised.

"How do you know that?"

"I told you we came to get you" the black mech said looking up behind the wall I was leaning against as if he was seeing someone.

"Not that I don't know what I deserve, but what did you want with me and Aqua?" there was no reason to hide our names anymore, I knew.

"That's classified until we get to a safer location, you young femme were lucky." He said waving at our surroundings. "All these mechs, they were the new decepticon army, every last one of these fraggers were planning on killing today's losers of the race and make the winners their decepticon soldiers. If you lot denied to be a decepticon you would have been shot on the spot." I winced at his comment.

"So…this was all a set up from the beginning…?" I felt a wave of dizziness but fortunately since I was leaning against the wall I wouldn't fall. There was a slight nod. "Did anyone else survive?" I asked somewhat hopeful, at least the racers should have been able to run.

"Only one, a youngling we found in the crowd" the medic said putting down her repaired arm and motioning for her to give him the other which she did without arguying. "He's in spark shock though; we had to evacuate him immediately." I nodded understandingly.

"Is your brother here?" this time I really nearly fell aside when he asked that, I glared at the black mech wondering why he would ask something like that, he looked dead serious.

"He was...why do you want my brother?" Primus he had better not be a decepticon…

"Was he in the illegal races as well?" he asked ignoring my question.

"No…he had the official races, why would he want to be here?"

"Then what was he doing here?" I groaned trying to avoid my processor to ache any further.

"The guys from the official races wanted him to infiltrate and snitch them. I saw him just after I realised what I was doing. He ran away though…." My voice processor was failing at the last part. "He's not coming back." The medic chose that moment to

Forcefully close the lid back onto my arm making me yank it back on self defence.

"That should do it; I can finish repairs once we're back at the base."

"Wait what?"

"Your coming with us younglin'" the black mech said taking hold of one of my arms and lifting me off the ground while the other did the same with the other, I felt my feet leave the metallic surface and wasn't feeling too comfortable about it.

"Hey hold on a nano-klik! Don't I get a say in this?!" I started trying to fight them to get back on the ground which was more than twice my size down.

"No" both said at the same time.

"But I!I! I have to go back to my sister! I can't just leave her there!"

"Your sister is offline young one, its useless to-"

I snapped, again. I kicked the mech right on the croch making him fall to the ground and unbalecing the other, I used that to push him back where he once again slid and fell down a pile of scrap metal from the dead shells. Loosing no time I made a dash for it, but I was no where near the speed I usually had. This was because of the disgust I had at the bodies before me and because I was tired, injured. I couldn't boost myself to run faster than a normal mech or femme. It was degrading.

I heard them growl insults and ordering me to to stop but I wouldn't. I saw a shadow up ahead but dismissed it as a glitch from all the stress I was under in such short time. I was nearly at the arena when all of the sudden that shadow became alive and I was smashed to the ground by a bigger and heavier body, held down like prey. I kicked and screamed, trying everything to get away from the one holding me down, squirming between gaps, and occasionally getting an arm or leg free only to have it captured again.

"Optimus!" I heard the medic shout " Don't let her out of your grasp!" I didn't know what was going on, I just knew that if I let them take me I'd never see my sister's body again, I would never see her again at all.

"NO!MY SISTER!I HAVE TO GET HER!PLEASE!" I begged but no one seemed to hear me. The medic and the other mech arrived just as I got two arms free.

"Ironhide, hold down her head and arm Optimus, hold down her legs and lower torso while I sedate her." The medic ordered. Oh slag, I didn't like the sound of that. I trashed as best I could but I had little to any strength left and all I could do was cry and beg as they held me down. I felt the trickle of the syringe on my neck lines and everything started to diffuse in my optic vision.

"Sorry kid, it's for your own good." I heard the medic say before my systems shut down.

The next thing I knew were voices again, it sounded like a busy place, lots of conversations were going on and I gradually started to understand the closest of them.

"…and all internal systems have healed properly, she should be up and racing the streets like before in no time." And unfamiliar voice said, he sounded young. "The only thing left to fix are the flamethrowers."

"That's all right First aid, I don't want those things fixed before I'm sure she won't use them to create another carnage." It was the same medic from before she was sure, she recognized his voice. "Has anyone been able to contact her brother yet?"

"No sir, after successfully informing Zeta Prime of the decepticons no one has had any notice of him"

"Zeta Prime? What the pit did he have to do with him?"

"You haven't heard sir?"

"In case you haven't noticed first Aid NO, I have NOT, I have been too busy in SURGERY trying to save someone's spark!" The other mech probably whimpered due to the older bot's shouting for she heard a strange sound.

"Kup's team found him while trying to intercept the decepticons, Blurr happened to be near and Optimus convinced him to deliver the warning."

"Optimus you say? Primus that kid has talent… I don't know how he does it but he always manages to make everyone take his side!" There was a pause. " So no one knows of the only guardian to this kid, and on top of that we have a traumatized youngling as well." He sighed tiredly. "I don't want him to see her, he'll loose a gasket for sure."

"I'll try and get more information on Blurr then sir, you better take some recharge. In case there is any more emergencies." There was a sigh from the old bot and then footsteps, the loud sounds of chatter increased when the door opened and then decreased again when it closed. If she was hearing correctly no one else was in the room, well no one active anyway. She onlined her optics to stare at a grey ceiling, she sat up painfully feeling the strain in her systems and looked around, it was a med bay, a very large med bay that a vague look of an emergency room. Back in Cybertron's golden age med bays were simple, the emergency rooms were smaller and rarely used. This one however was massive, and for a good reason, there were many mechs laying on berths, almost half of them missing something or looking drained.

In a way it was better than the arena she left behind, but it still made her sick to her spark. So many.

She carefully got off the berth and walked around between them, wondering if she'd meet someone she knew, but that was unlikely, she hardly knew anyone besides her brother and sister. Which made her wonder what was she to do now.

The thought had sunk in so heavily she didn't realise she stopped in front of one of the private rooms. She was brought back through when she heard whimpers and cries. Carefully she turned to the notice on the door with the patient's information. He looked young, had miraculously only a few dents and scratches but had suffered a lot from the loss of his parents.

The notice didn't say anything about him being online since he got here and the guy was probably scared, he was her age according to the info. She hesitated for a while before finally getting the courage to open the door and step into the darkened room, where blue optics dripping energon looked up at her sadly; she looked back at him with the same expression. This was the youngling they had saved from her massacre.

I paused, not really sure if I should go on. Bumblebee was as the humans say 'the edge of his seat'.

"Well? Who was it? What happened?" I hesitated, my optics threatening to spill, I knew this time would come some day.

"You"

* * *

Ah that was cruel I know :) anyway review please.


	6. A New Fear but New Hope

Before I start THANK YOU Chaos Wielder for the constructive review! Yes I agree with you on that, I intended ashbringer to sound mary sue until this part though. The two twins always work in reverse, so from this point out she will be less of a mary sue. Also when she killed all of those bots she wasn't really aware of what she was doing, this will be explained in this chapter.

Ah and sorry about the grammar, I know of it, I do use spelling programs and all that gibberish but as you can see it often fails. English is not my mother language and even if it was I can hardly find my own errors from time to time. Really sorry about that.

* * *

Ashbringer didn't need to carry on with her story; Bumblebee knew perfectly well, he remembered that day like no other.

FLASHBACK

He didn't know why he cried anymore, it had been so many cycles he could no longer understand or even begin to remember why his spark hurt so badly. The medics had rescued and taken care of him, some weapons specialist had helped out apparently. He had no idea how he got there and why.

He only knew the painful void inside of him.

The door suddenly slid open letting in the lights from the general med bay. At the entrance was a femme, probably around his age, red and black, with an expression almost as sad as the one I was wearing, she wasn't crying though, she just gave me a look of sympathy.

"H-hey" she said, leaning in against the side of the door, almost as if hesitating to come in " I heard you cry…" she sniffled trying to keep her own tears at bay " you okay?"

I tilted my head slightly, considering the question myself. She seemed to notice my confusion and walked up to me sitting at my side on the berth and watching the door close automatically.

"For what it's worth… I'm sorry" she said her voice processor failing ever so lightly. He examined her for a while, trying to make out if she really meant that and why did she, but he just couldn't tell. "You can feel it right? That…sick feeling inside you" she asked still not looking at me optic to optic, pulling up her knees and hugging them staring off at the walls nervously. " Like something that should belong inside you went missing, and is never coming back"

"Are you a survivor too?" he asked almost afraid to speak his own words, lest he break into a fit of uncontrolled sobs. She chuckled lightly, not a happy chuckle, more like an ironic one.

"You could say that…I also lost someone there."

"Is that why we're feeling like this?" he asked uncertain, putting a hand over his chest, where beneath his spark was beating weakly.

"Yeah…it's because we lost someone close to us, like a creator or a sibling, or a bonded one."

" Who did you loose?" he tried to get a glimpse of her optics but she just would deny looking at him.

"My sister…and my brother."

"I'm sorry…" he said noticing how hard it was for her to admit it. " I can't remember who I lost, but I still feel it. The pain I mean." She nodded in comprehension. "Is there any way to get rid of it?" he asked, almost pleadingly, the pain would make him cry every so often and he didn't like it, it was bad enough he was showing it to a femme. Mechs were meant to be headstrong.

"No. But I wouldn't want to anyway, its okay to miss the ones we lost, even if we don't remember them, because it just means they meant something for us, and it would be wrong to forget them." I stared in amazement at the words; the femme herself seemed surprised at her sudden realisation but quickly tried to recover. "Anyway that's what I think." she blushed slightly. "Even if it sounds stupid."

"Its not stupid. I think your right actually." For the first time she looked at him directly in the optics, and it didn't show sadness. Her optics were seeking something more, something like forgiveness. "And you know what?" she shook her head slightly still in a stupor for finding the mech so comprehensive. "Let's get through this together. We're standing on the same ground so we might as well stick together. Just as friends of course." He held out a hand for her, and she shakily took it sealing their agreement.

"So… what's your name?" he asked leaning back against the wall behind the berth, finally feeling a bit better and ceasing his crying.

A few hours after the door hissed open again and the white and red medic nearly had a spark attack when he saw the two younglings curled next to each other recharging, their expressions one of peace.

End of Flashback

"Ratchet blew a gasket that day…" he said not really managing to be angry at her like she was expecting, she had after all tried to make it up to him till that day, and had been fearing the time when she had to tell him the truth.

"Yeah…he did…" she agreed, not daring to say anymore.

"What happened after that? I can't quite remember…"

"We had no where else to go, so we entered the recruiting teams; you were under Ironhide's supervision most of the time."

"Yeah, you got Prowl's…" he chuckled lightly and the femme scowled.

"I had my reasons!" she defended.

"Yeah…Remember our first training day with 'hide?" she rolled her optics.

"Primus do I…"

Flashback

It was their first day, The yellow mech was practically jumping on his feet chirping ever so often in a sign of his impatience. Anyone who would have known Ashbringer from before would have thought she was joining him in his childish ways, impatiently annoying anyone who made their training start this late. But instead she was leaning against the wall, scowling. Her audios were nearly bursting from continuously hearing Bumblebee's whistling. She didn't like the idea of weapon training, not one bit.

Her only weapons were the pit forsaken flame throwers in her arms and considering the last experience she didn't want them ever activated again.

As it was however that was not possible. According to Ratchet they had been installed with a connection that went directly to her cerebral unit, which explained her loss of self control and most of her consciousness at the last race. According to them, there was a program in the flamethrowers that could override any other processing function just so it could make the blasted weapons the main priority: burning everything in sight.

This clouded her thoughts and eluded her spark setting her on a rampage she would probably never be able to do by herself.

When they had asked where she got them, she had to confess her dealings with Swindle and they seemed to know to whom the flamethrowers had belonged before almost instantly. The name made her sick to her spark almost as bad as when her sister died. The mech's name had been Hot Heel, another racer, but worse of all, it had been her creator.

Her creator had been an extremely talented racer before Blurr's age and had off-lined by the hands of some unknown mech. The pieces however started to add up and she was starting to realise who it had been. She felt disgusted and immediately asked for them to remove the flamethrowers, but as it was they said it was incredibly risky and that she would be putting at stake both her sanity and her life at doing so.

So she was left with the option of either killing myself or living with those monsters stuck to me.

The autobots had been kind enough to offer her training so she could control them more consciously and even put her in charge of a new second in command named Prowl, who apparently had a similar problem to mine, which was his CPU locking down every time someone told him something illogical.

This was mostly an occasion with the two twins he had saved not long ago from a recent decepticon attack. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe. The two had been staying with them and she often found herself having to help the poor mech control the two, though sometimes she joined in the fun herself. It made me sad however to be around them. She would always remember her sister, and how they shared a similar bond.

The said mechs were impatiently waiting, sunny bitching as usual and Sideswipe was nearing the point where boredom would get to him and he'd start inventing some prank.

"What is taking so LONG?!" Sunstreaker whined for the hundredth time.

"You got me…" his brother said sitting down and poking the metallic floor like it was the most interesting thing in the world, or maybe he was already preparing a new prank…" maybe he got his aft rusted in the hall and won't budge."

Just as he said this, the four heard the loud feet of a far taller mech than them and watched as a black armoured warrior came into view, massive cannons on each forearm and a hardened expression.

This was Ironhide, the weapons specialist, and today, he was our new teacher. His armour was thick with scars and scratches and he looked like he hardly even cared about paintjobs anymore.

"Righ', mornin' younglings." He said in his gruff voice, entering the code to the shooting range. " As yeh know I'm Ironhide and I'll be teaching you lot from today on. Any doubts or questions you have with your weaponry you come to me." The door hissed open and he led the four inside. The room was a massive training area for many different purposes, today however he was simply setting up the shooting dummies.

"Now first thing we gotta know is what kind of range do you guys have." He explained setting up the last controls in the system. The four were lined side by side staring up at him with different reactions.

Bumblebee was plain excited, Ashbringer was fearfull, Sunny was eager to blast something while sides looked bored.

" So I want each of you to pick a target, and shoot at it."

"Just…shoot at it?" Sunny asked disappointed, he needed a bit of more action.

"For now." The bulky mech said, taking a seat a bit ways off to examine them.

Bumblebee went first, changing his right arm into a simple stinger, it wasn't a particularly powerful weapon, but if it used right it could be used for torture or for smaller but more precise hits.

He shot at the dummy but only managed to graze its shoulder. Out of frustration he tried a few more times but failed at each of them until Ironhide told him to stop.

Ashbringer discreetly tried to step back, letting the twins go first.

Sunny went ahead, changing both his arms into cannons, they weren't anything like Ironhide's, not even near that level, but they were certainly better than Bumblebee's stinger. He hit the target almost dead on, failing by a few inches, and then hit a few more times but no where near the main targets. Ironhide told him to stop and called up the next one, deciding to ignore the golden youngling's rude protesting.

Sideswipe had an aim almost as good as his brother, but used a shoulder cannon for the target instead. They had heard that both the twins had been found at the gladiator's ring after it had been destroyed by the decepticons, very little was known about the rest as the two didn't seem to want to share the information.

Then it was Ashbringer's turn, but she didn't step up to shoot at the target.

Noticing her lack of response Ironhide made a sound with his vocalizer to try and get her down to reality, but she just refused to move forwards. Bee gave her a slight push forwards making her stand in her place, but she did nothing else, trying desperately to look away from her target and keeping her hands tied behind her back.

"AshBringer are yeh even looking at the damn target? I just want you to shoot it! You don't have to ponder on how to!"

"I-I don't want to shoot it." She said trembling slightly, trying to block out memories of the piles of empty shells.

"Well why not?" the weapon specialist asked while noting something down in his data pad. He knew the answer, but some warriors needed to get this out.

"I'm afraid I'll loose control again" He sighed, yep, he knew it. The femme was dead scared about using her flamethrowers, and by the looks of it he wouldn't be convincing her to do so for some time.

"Fine, get back in line soldier." She glanced at the bot seeing he wouldn't even look up at her as he said that, and knew he was disappointed, but she really couldn't bring herself to use those monsters.

She avoided the other's gazes as they questioned why she refused to hit the target, but she just chose to ignore them for the time being.

The next exercise had been a lot easier; it consisted in spreading out in teams of two, and trying to take the other two down with fake laser riffles. Bumblebee and AshBringer were good at hiding and keeping quiet, plus the two had good speed to sneak around so they could get the twins off guard more often, however both were lousy shots and when it came down to hand to hand combat…well…lets just say gladiators weren't usual in the racing world and their tinier sizes were a big disadvantage.

They went for three rounds until they started taking it as a game and would loose mostly from laughing or falling into each other's tricks.

Ironhide watched it all with an examining mind, he was studying these four, seeing if they could be good warriors or not, if he could actually teach them to defend themselves.

* * *

Ah this chapter is done, sort of short, but I like its size. From here on out more of these flashbacks will tell the story rather than the character telling it. hope its a little better :3


	7. Memory

Thanks again to Chaos Wielder for the constructive review I will take that advice on some bots not liking her but its going to be a bit ahead, I have my cards set out and I just need to play them when its their turn. ;)

Also this continues from the flashback. The whole chapter is in the past.

* * *

It had been many cycles; the autobots kept training them, not only with weapons, stealth or reflexes but also with tactics. Jazz was lending them a good hand teaching about sabotaging techniques while preceptor and wheeljack tried to both teach them logic skills and scientific methods. In reality, all they were trying to do was to find out what position they would take when they were officially in the army.

Prowl had the kindness to offer them some tactics lessons by the end of the day but the twins weren't interested and both Bumblebee and AshBringer would end up falling asleep halfway through his lessons, not that he minded, he was a very busy bot and barely recharged himself so he used the time to do so.

Prime would rarely participate in our training but whenever he found the time to chat he would ask us how it was going and what we had learned, and eventually in those rare occasions he would give advice here and there, something that came out of his experience. He was a good mech, had a very kind spark and seemed to always understand and worry about everyone. It was a pity such a nice mech was stuck as prime and basically doomed to never be happy. That was probably why every bot in there gave their best at their positions.

Ratchet had tried in vain to teach us advanced medical skills but got no further than emergency field treatment.

At the time for us it felt like it would always be that way, living on and on learning new things, training to be better, and a calming peace that eased our sparks.

But our world would not give us such a precious gift.

It was a regular evening, the base was quiet at this time, because either someone was going into shift, or out of and into the recharge berth.

The three of them were quietly sipping at their energon, joints groaning after a long training session with Ironhide.

He had gone from harmless shooting practice with fake amo, to real life explosions and blasts capable of throwing even the twins across the room. Of course Ratchet insisted that he should at least be there when they were training this in case anything went wrong.

The only one missing among them was Sideswipe, who, after getting his aft fixed from one of the blasts he tried to protect his brother from, went grouching about some evil revenge of some sort. His Brother paid no mind and kept his processor on the energon.

They had grown quite a bit, both the twins being oldest had already gotten their final upgrade, AshBringer was near hers and Bumblebee still had a bit to wait. In all honesty she couldn't wait for the day, her own armour was starting to feel tight and it bothered her when she moved, she was used to feeling her movements free with nothing to interrupt them.

Bee had mostly been complaining about his wing panels and in truth they did stop moving as much lately. He probably had little space left there.

The most frightening thing though about upgrades was that they determined the time when our young 'innocence' would be officially gone and we would have to choose a side among the factions and what speciality we would be in.

"I swear to Primus if he manages to invent a new way of making field training harder, then Ironhide will find himself at the wrong end of his own cannon" Sunny said breaking the relaxing silence. We chuckled in amusement, knowing very well he didn't mean it.

"Think of it this way Sunny, if Ironhide gives us such hard training sessions then facing the decepticons will be easy." The golden warrior smirked, motioning with his energon towards the smaller autobot.

"True I admit."

"When is your brother coming Sunny? He's been gone for a long time…." AshBringer asked, eyeing the door suspiciously. Sometimes the mech had the tenancy to try and prank her.

"Dunno, but he's pretty excited about it" the twin said frowning. " In fact…almost too happy…"

"Sounds like an all out prank for everyone." Bumblebee pointed out cheerfully. The femme next to him just groaned covering her spiked helm as if it would get her away from the ominous doom. "Let's go check it out!"

"Primus Bee no!" the femme complained getting full out grins from the two yellow mechs. "You'll get caught in that mess and we'll end up in the brig again…I don't think I can do that to Prowl again."

"Prowl can handle it" Sunny said getting to his feet and turning around the table, Bumblebee also got to his feet but didn't move away and she suddenly had a spine tingling feeling. She tried to use her speed and get away but had realised it a little too late. Sunny grabbed her by the waist lifting her up and slinging her over his shoulder. The femme would have beaten him senseless if it weren't for the knowledge of how much he appreciated his paintjob and how much of a psycho he'd be if she ruined it. So instead she went into cursing him all the way to the pit with everything she knew.

Bumblebee came behind them, grinning up at her as she glared back down. She wasn't going to get away from this.

It didn't take very long to hear a large commotion building up. Sunstreaker led the way, knowing full well through his link where his brother was. Soon enough they found him at the end of a hall, peeking to the other side trying to hold in his laughter.

Sunny put her down at that time and went to see his brother's handiwork when Prime went past the hall sliding as if he was on ice and crashing on the other side. Sideswipe couldn't hold it in any longer and laughed his spark out while his brother was twitching, apparently in anger.

"Sides…is that by any chance my special wax all over the floor?" The red twin suddenly stopped laughing as if he had just realised something.

"Uhhh…..maybe…" Sunny growled, and before the two smaller bots could do anything the twins went running the other way, Sunstreaker cursing far worse than AshBringer had a few seconds ago and promising his brother's new remodelling.

"Think he'll be okay?" Bee asked still staring at the now empty hall, listening to the dying shouts.

"If there's anything that guy is good at its surviving his own pranks." She said staring back at the waxed hall, at the end were about five mechs piled onto each others. One of them had been Prime himself. " Though I am quite curious on how he'll get out of this one, check this out." She called. The young bot went over and stared in amazement at the end of the hall.

"I don't care what others think, that mech…is Primus." She hit him atop the head.

"Don't start, you better not start venerating him again."

"Nah I won't…" he said turning back to the fallen mechs. " should we help them? Apart from Prime I don't know the others…"

"Good, because that means neither Red Alert nor Prowl are here, lets make a run for it." He grabbed onto her arm before she could though. "Wasn't Kup's team coming in today?" she blinked, trying to recall any notice about it.

"I think so…why?"

"Well because there's an old mech in there staring at us with a very sour look…" She turned to look and in deed the said mech was glaring at them.

"Well what are you two younglings waiting for?! Get something to pull us out of here!" the mech yelled. Everyone was under Prime, which made them almost immobile.

"Ah…I'll get a rope…I think I saw some in the third storage a few days ago. You wait here in case anyone else falls into side's…shinning prank"

"Sure, just hurry, I don't think that bot looks too happy." She nodded, putting down her mask and ran off.

Not long after he could hear her boosters echoing in the halls, signalling her return, Primus the femme loved to show off sometimes, especially whenever it came to being fast.

She was a good mechanism, but her best skill relied solely on her speed, she was far from being a good strategist, and still refused to use a real weapon, he was starting to think she would never wield one at all.

Still, from the records they had been practicing her speed wasn't enough; she always aimed for the official record, but never got near it. Still she had to be the fastest on the base at the moment, not that there were many speedsters to begin with, but Jazz thought him a thing or too on how to conserve energy to be faster.

One of the best trainings however was to get Ratchet into Hatchet mode. They would have to make a mad dash around the base and find good hiding, something not quite easy considering the bot had millennia of experience in the matter.

He saw the familiar colour of her armour before she stopped right next to him with piles of cables in her arms.

"Well...they aren't cords...but I think they'll do."

"Good, I'll go give them the cables, you hold onto the other end and pull us out."

"Oh no! No way! You pull, you have more strength than I do! Besides I won't make as much damage as you would if you crash into them." He chuckled, it was an advantage of being a speeding model, your processor would also be quicker than others, although she hardly showed such characteristic since she fell into recharge on most of our theory lessons.

He gave her the end of the cable and she went into the slippery floor, nearly almost crashing into the ground even though she was careful. He gave her a light push on the back and she went sliding forward halfway into the hall until she stopped.

"Now what?"

"You can't move?"

"If I move I'll fall! And then I'll never get off this accursed ground!"

"Well use your back boosters then!"

"WHAT?!"

"It will get you moving!"

"It'll shoot me into the slaggining wall!"

"WILL YOU TWO HURRY IT UP ALLREADY!?" The old mech yelled over their own voices. She whined crouching into stance with care not to slip, adjusting her back boosters, turning them the other way and turned them on.

Like expected she went darting forward hitting the wall with a resounding CLANG!

"Owww…." She fell back onto the pile of mechs. "Sorry for the wait sirs, minor problems at prankster control" she joked " Now if you will please be so kind to hold onto the rope my friend over there will start pulling us forwards."

She climbed around the mechs, giving each a part of the rope.

"Allrighty, did I get to everyone?"

"No! I'm stuck on the other side!" came a muffled voice, Prime tried to move but it only seemed to make the mech even more uneasy so he stopped.

"Ah….I'll get to him sir, excuse me" she said climbing over his large body trying not to hurt him. She looked down to the remaining bot and had such a shock she tripped and fell off Prime landing on the waxed floor in a not so dignifying manner.

"Are you all right femme?" someone from the other side asked, she heard the same question from the mech half buried under Prime's weight, light blue armour giving away his identity.

"Blurr?!" the mech tried to lift himself only to slip and hit with his face back onto the floor. His answer came muffled again.

"That's me!Now, you mind handing me that cable of yours femme?"

"Wha-?how-?" she looked up at prime trying to seek an answer that didn't come. " Hold on just a nanosec! FEMME?! Since when do you call me femme?!" she growled trying to get to her feet only to slip and crash back down on her back.

"Er… am I supposed to have known you before? You know I get along with a lot of femmes and I have a bad memory" he said in an unusual flirting tone that he would never use around her or her sister.

"What the Slag is going on?!" she tried to reach the wall so she could have some sort of support to throw herself back to prime.

"AshBringer" the prime interrupted us. " If you can, please hand him the cable first, I'll explain everything once we're done. We have certain news about your….brother" he said a bit hesitantly, trying to look back at them.

"B-but!"

"I'll explain everything later." He insisted. Something about his tone made her trust him, he had been one of the mechs who saved her and believed she could recover from what she had done, so she would put her life in the line for this mech if she had to.

Reluctantly she slid her way over to her older brother and handed him the cable, he stared back mildly confused, no sign of recognition in him. And his end of the spark link was still locked.

She then held onto prime's body pulling herself forward to the front of the cable. " Allright bee! Start pulling! I'll be right over to help you!" turning to prime she steadily placed her feet on his shoulders "ah…sorry about this sir!" and pushed herself forward turning on her boosters again towards the other end of the hall where the wax ended.

Soon the two managed to pull the last mech and all seemed relieved to be out of the slippery situation. AshBringer watched her brother's every move with tension, he seemed himself, his normal self, but he…he was acting as if he didn't know her at all.

Prime came over to the two of us as we stood a good distance to give them their space.

"You two…I must thank you for your help, I'm afraid we would have to wait until Red Alert saw us on the monitors if you hadn't come first."

"No problem sir!" Bumblebee promptly said.

" Ah….Optimus…if you don't mind…"

"I'll explain everything…but it's best if its in my office." She nodded comprehending something had to be terribly wrong. Her thoughts however were interrupted by an alarmed voice coming from the other hallway, and before anyone knew it a panicking Red Alert went sliding down the hall.

"I'll get him, you go on" Bumblebee said noticing the divided look she had for a moment.

"But you don't have any boosters…." He shrugged.

"I'll manage, go on. I have plenty of bots here to ask help to." Briefly she thanked him and followed prime and the old geezer who had already started a conversation with him.

She tried to shut out of their conversation while they talked, her processor still wondering about her brother. The last time she had seen him it had been at the incident, and he made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with her. So what was he doing here? And why did he act like he didn't know her? Was he ashamed?

She vaguely heard the door to the office close behind her and only noticed a question must have been directed at her when the two bots stopped talking.

"Huh?"

"You got a drifter here kid." The old bot said to prime sitting down on a chair unceremoniously.

"I asked for you to take a seat Flamer" Had she been human, she would have gulped, her spark tightened though. Prime never called her by her first name unless he meant it was serious. When she came she asked for everyone to call her by AshBringer instead of Flamer, as a reminder of what she had done so that she could never run away from it. Slowly she took the offered seat and stared at the two with fear.

"I-is something wrong with my brother Optimus?" The tall mech didn't say anything for the longest time, his optics dimming, as if considering on how to approach the subject. The older bot however didn't seem so uneasy about it.

"Look kid… I'm gonna make this simple for you, there isn't a smoother way to say it. Your brother self erased his own memory core. He has no idea that your part of his life, he doesn't know his creators, nor you, he only knows that he is a famous racer, and that now he works for us." She stared in disbelief, an uncontrollable pain throbbing around her struggling spark. One thing was for him to abandon her, but for him to completely erase her from his memory…to completely erase her existence… "I'm sorry kid, there's nothing we can do to recover his memory. He can't remember you because to him, you don't exist."

* * *

Ah, had fun with this one. Hope you like it. Thanks again for the constructive review!


	8. Femme Extermination

Her spark felt like it stopped, the whole world was spinning faster than she could run and the words kept echoing deep in her processor.

"W-what?" maybe her audios were malfunctioning.

"You heard me kid." The old mech said crossing his arms, evaluating how the femme would take it. Prime was now watching as well, wanting to say something but having nothing to say.

Her optics dimmed as she stood back to her feet again.

"I-is that all sirs?" It was taking a great deal of self control not to just run out of there and hide in some hole.

"Yes, you can leave AshBringer, and take the day off. I think you'll need it for today." Her Prime said, she could sense a bit of comfort just by the gaze he was giving her, but it would do nothing, she couldn't help but feel hurt, and it was going to take a long time to heal that.

Slowly she stepped out of the office and walked down the hall, each step seemed as light feathered as her mind, as if it didn't exist. She stopped at some point and leaned against the wall, trying to hold in everything.

Finally it broke out; she let out a sob and slowly slid down sitting on the floor and hiding her face against the cool metal of the wall. She hated crying, she rarely did, she found it embarrassing and a sign of weakness. It always made others sad to see her cry and she didn't like the feelings of pity for her. She wouldn't even cry in front of her sister before, the one she trusted the most.

She kept trying to search for some comforting presence in her spark but all that was left was an empty hole. Loneliness strikes like an arrow to the spark.

"Hey AshBringer!" a voice called, but she didn't pay it any mind, she just wanted to get away from it. The mech's steps stopped for a moment and then hurried over as if he had noticed something was wrong. "AshBringer? You okay?" a hand pulled her away from her wall to come face to face with Sunny's who was looking down at her with some worry. He frowned even more when he saw the energon tears smearing her cheeks and the look of pains he had. "What happened? Did someone hurt you?"

She started shaking more violently, trying to hold it in again, not wanting to show it in front of her friend. He asked again but got no answer, and the way her optics were dimming was worrying. "C'mon, I'll help you back to your Quarters, I think you need recharge." The femme didn't respond and eventually he found himself having to hold her up by the shoulder and drag her all the way there.

Her room was simple, it had the bare necessities and a few data pads, most of them being left behind strategy homework.

Sunny went in and sat her down on her berth, but she didn't seem to be willing to recharge, he pulled a chair and placed it in front of her, sitting down.

"Okay, are you going to tell me what's going on? Sideswipe will be coming soon with Bee so if you don't want them pestering it out of you; you might as well start telling me."

Surprisingly the femme looked up with almost pleading optics, searching for an answer to her pain.

"Have you ever…felt like your spark went empty? I mean, have you ever lost anyone?" The golden warrior was taken a bit by surprise from the question, he had heard about Bumblebee's and AshBringer's story briefly, if he remembered correctly the two had been found when someone went on a killing spree at the last of the Illegal races. He and his brother had always wanted to go to one of those and watch.

"I guess… Sideswipe almost died once…" he admitted, his face darkening, the femme however had stopped crying and was listening intently. "It was my fault, I should have been there to protect him…I felt like he was missing in our link for the longest time, like he had off lined. It was the worse feeling of all." He noticed she smiled faintly looking back down to her own hands on her lap.

"I had a sister you know?" If the golden warrior was surprised, he didn't show it, but he kept listening. "Like you and Sideswipe we were twins, and I guess I was much like you when it came to her. I wanted to protect her, and to live with her all the time. We were very different but part of each other." He nodded in recognition, knowing full well what she meant.

"You got separated?" she shook her head, and that could only mean the worse. He knew why she was so upset now. "What happened?"

"I…" her jaw moved several times but she couldn't place the right words and looked away, trying to gain her courage. "I…killed her…" Before he could even make out about how he felt about the matter she broke down into real crying this time, hiding her faceplates between her hands and her knees. He had no words of comfort, nothing that he would say would make her feel better, and he knew very little about the story but it looked like she wanted anything but what she had done.

"A-and h-he hates-s me f-for it" she said, her voice processor failing quite a lot now that her systems were stressed.

"Who hates you?" Now he wasn't new to knowing hatred from another, but in the base everyone had always showed them a reasonable amount of respect and no one ever showed any signs of dislike towards them, well maybe except when sideswipe put up his pranks, but that was an exception.

"M-my brother" her voice hitched a bit at the word.

"You have a brother?" she nodded, not looking up from her knees and trying to calm her systems as the coolant started to take action.

"His here. He arrived tod-day…" Sunny had faintly heard the door opening a few seconds ago but didn't have to look back to know who it was. His attention was on his friend at the moment. " H-he…" suddenly, from the frustration of being unable to word it she threw her head backwards hitting the wall with her spikes in a painful manner.

His brother and Bumblebee hissed behind him probably imagining how much that had hurt.

"He erased his memory core to forget me" she blurted out, now that hitting her head had put her mildly unfocused, enough to tell the truth.

There was silence for a while, until her sobs were beginning again. She slowly slid her face mask into place hiding away behind it. Not wanting to face them with all the shame she felt.

Bumblebee was the first to make a move, having known her longer than the others; he sat down next to her and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

"Its Blurr isn't it? I saw the way you were looking at him when we pulled them out." She nodded briefly. The twins had quizzical looks on their faceplates, most likely sunstreaker telling his brother what had happened until they arrived. The two suddenly nodded to each other.

"Bee, we need to go for a while, are you going to stay with her?" the small yellow bot looked at the two suspiciously, easily guessing what the two had in mind but knowing the dead set look they had would pay no mind to his words if he tried to stop them.

"Yeah, you guys go on." The two left without any words, shoulders stiff with anger.

AshBringer kept on sobbing for about half an hour more and was slowly calming down until he felt the familiar feeling of a body giving in. The indication she had gone into Recharge. He set her down, mildly remembering the first day they had met and how their roles had changed this time. Quietly with trained steps for a future spy, he left the room and went to find what kind of damage the twins had already done.

AshBringer awoke to an unfamiliar sound. True it was foreign and unusual, but not unknown. Tired as she was however she just turned to the other side of her berth and tried to go back to sleep, but the annoying sound kept coming. It was only when everything shook and a loud explosion took place that she woke up fully, her systems turning on in a mad dash for complete awareness. She was in her room, the alarm was going off, and there were sounds of fighting.

She got off her berth and hurried to the door, but right before she could punch the lock open the hissing noise came to her audios and she looked up at a figure, darkened by the lights behind him, he was taller, and definitely more powerful than her. Still in shock from the whole situation and with low energy from her short recharge she barely saw the blast coming at her and only managed to avoid being hit in the spark. Instead her right shoulder felt like it was on fire and she was thrown back by the impact, crashing against the wall on the other side.

"That was too easy" the mech said putting away his weapon.

"What are you doing over there skywarp!? We're supposed to find the femme!" another voice shouted, far more high pitched than his partner. Her spark however jumped in fear when she realised what he said. She was the only femme in the entire base. This couldn't be good.

"Some good for nothing mech was coming, I shot him though" his counterpart appeared next to him to look inside.

Rage filled his crimson optics and he hit the other on the chest pushing him back.

"You idiot! That IS the femme!" The first mech rubbed his chest, scowling at his superior.

"What? That ugly thing? That's hardly a femme Starscream"

Starscream snarled at his counterpart with a venomous look. " I'm telling you Skywarp this is the one." He walked into the room, clearly confident in his own capacity and showing no fear. "Your coming with us femme." It wasn't a request, it was an order.

She trembled in pain, holding onto her injured shoulder with her good hand, and kneeling on the ground, glaring up at the seeker.

"Frag off, I'm not going anywhere."

The darker seeker behind him snickered but Starscream only scowled, his voice gave out his outrage.

"You will do as I command and will address me as Lord Starscream" he said leaning down in front of her, too close for comfort. "Is that clear?"

" Like I said, frag off" his hand shot out of no where hitting her helm with so much strength she went against the wall once more with a pained yelp. "Get away from me you creep!" she tried in vain to push his hand off her head, but with only one hand it was a bit hard to.

"I'm going to enjoy torturing you femme." He seethed.

That did it though, panic struck, she placed her feet on his shoulders, much to his surprise, and burned rubber.

With the sudden force and speed her wheels took on his shoulders, StarScream was thrown back against his partner.

It was her only chance; she got to her unsteady feet and did the best she could do: she ran. Outside though was a third seeker, surprised to even see her running out of there, he started shooting to try and stop her but missing because he could barely see her.

Her spark was pumping with fear and adrenaline, she wasn't thinking on how fast or how slow she was, only that her shoulder was hurting and that she was on her own. The halls were all in a complete mess, signs of spilled energon and burnt marks from explosions stained the walls.

The sound of jet engines reached her audios, and that wasn't a good sign.

Originally seekers had good speed, more than most, still it was nothing compared to a racer's, however with an injured shoulder and her energy levels reaching critical she doubted she could outrun them for long.

The burning pain of a laser hit her left leg making her yelp and trip, sliding down the hall.

She barely took much notice of the action, looking up to the jets coming her way. She tried to get up but felt her hand slip and realised where she was.

Sideswipe's previous prank had yet to be taken care of.

The three jets flew over and transformed when close enough, thankfully though they hadn't noticed the wax and slipped as well falling on top of each others. She used the chance to turn on her own boosters and shoot herself past them, but at the last moment, clawed fingers sunk into her knee holding her back. She screamed in pain for it had been the injured leg and tried to kick it with the other, but the seeker wouldn't let go.

"I got her!"a low voiced one spoke, it was the one who had been waiting at the hall.

She was pulled back towards them and felt their heavy limbs holding her down, restraining her movement.

She struggled, trying to hit as much as she could but she didn't have a lot of strength to begin with and it was one against three.

"Good" Starscream leered over her, tightening his grip on her neck. " Now, you will come with us, lord Megatron has a special place for you". Just in that moment though something crashed into the four, coming out of no where and throwing the seekers off her, but not by much. A hand pulled her back out of the waxed zone, it seemed she had been right at the edge; she didn't escape the seekers by mere inches.

"You okay?" The familiar voice nearly made her want to purge her tank. She looked up at the light blue racer next to her, with a riffle raised, ready to fire as soon as the seekers gained their balance again over the wax. "Go. I'll hold them back, most of the others aren't far, you have to get to someone."

"B-but I…!"

" I told you to go femme! You can't fight them all!" The way he said made her come back to reality, this wasn't her brother anymore, he didn't know her, to him she was a regular femme. He was just doing his job here.

In the midst of their arguing though neither noticed that skywarp had disappeared from his position and when he reappeared it was with a right hook heading straight for the light blue mech, nearly throwing him into the waxed zone.

The two set into a fury of fists and kicks and she barely had time to duck away from danger, unable to take her eyes off the two.

As far as she remembered, her brother didn't know how to fight, much less the way he did now, but was good at it. He used his speed to get more hits than his strength to make them harder, hitting pressure points or fragile areas to render the other defenceless and tired.

As she backed away though she felt something collide with her back and before she could run for it was grabbed from behind, a hand covering her mouth. She tried to struggle yet again but her energy was running so low she found her movements to be rather sluggish and feeble.

"Stop!" Starscreams voice came from behind her. " or I'll kill her" the end of a null ray gun met her throat and she saw the look of fear reach the blue mech's optics. Skywarp, who was behind him seemed relieved that they stopped fighting and disappeared, reappearing back next to his comrades.

AshBringer saw the fear any mech would be showing for their comrade at the moment, and in a fleet moment of desperations she tried to reach out to his spark, but it was still closed off. Realization struck, she was on her own, she wouldn't be able to count on him to save her like when she was little, the autobots wouldn't be able to protect her at all times, she had to fight back some time.

"Now…if you'll excuse us…we have busyness to attend to." Starscream said carefully heading for the exit.

She pulled myself forward pretending to want out of his grasp, he tried to pull back and then suddenly she herself threw her head back against his chest with all her strength, her helm spikes pierced his armour, bending unpleasantly. The seeker screamed in pain pulling her out of his chest and throwing her to the ground. She rolled at their feet and in an adrenaline rush made an effort to kneel up, raise her good arm and aim. The flamethrower whined in protest after not being used for so long. The towering fire burst out throwing back the seekers who had been unfortunate enough to be in close proximity.

As soon as the fire died out the flamethrower cut off. There were no bodies, but there were no seekers as well, and as far as she was concerned that was good news.

Her self repair systems were begging to turn on and finally she let herself fall into stasis, having the fleeting thought that for now at least, she was safe.

The next time she on lined there were no more alarms, and no more fighting noises. She looked around at her surroundings, finding herself in the medbay. Her shoulder and leg didn't hurt as much anymore, they just felt sore, and she had an energon feed connected to her good arm.

"Glad your back with the online" She turned at the sound of her friend's voice, Bumblebee was on another berth next to hers, uncharacteristically scowling. "Heard about what happened. Blurr brought you back; we thought you were offline for a moment there."

"Oh…"was all she could manage to say, experimenting her leg carefully, she always paid great care towards them.

"Optimus is sending you away." She stopped, looking back at her friend, who kept scowling like he was hating something down to every molecular structure of its being.

"What?"

"He said it's too dangerous for you to stay with us any longer. The decepticons are after the femmes, all of them. Megatron is killing them all off."

"B-but…what…where will I go?! I have no where to go to! You guys are my family!"

"I know…we feel the same way. But Optimus says it's not safe. He's sending you to Elita One's troops. For femme training." His fists tightened, he was angry about it, they had made a vow to be there for each other, but now they were going to be separated.

There was nothing she could say however, she knew Optimus only wanted the best for his troops and after that day she really couldn't argue back with reason. She could only sulk with her best friend.

* * *

Both friends now scowled in the present, the memories proving not to be very pleasant after all.

"That was the last time we saw you until you landed back on earth."

"Yeah" I agreed, poking at my knee thoughtfully.

"I never got to ask, but did you get along with the femmes?"

"Ah…well…you could say we had different perspectives…"

* * *

Ah finished this part finally, I didn't want to go into too much detail on how their lives were, since this is a spot light its meant to be story telling though one's fleeting memories. Next we'll follow her experience with the femmes.


	9. Elita's Crew

It had been a sad day when Elita One's troops arrived.

Her small ship landed not too gracefully in the hangar, banged and bent in so many ways one could easily guess it had already seen many battles.

She had not known how bad the femme situation was until that day when Bumblebee told her of what was going on. As soon as she could she went to investigate the matter and found that many of several femmes had already been terminated. Or so told the data central.

Elita One was the femme commander of a group of autobot femmes fighting for their rights and survival, helping each others and training the younger femmes.

She didn't quite know what to make out of them, Elita seemed to be the strict type, proud to the exoskeleton.

So when the ship first touched the solid metal ground she couldn't help but feel her spark flutter in anxiousness. The femme commander definitely seemed the type who would criticise you with no hesitation and she wondered what she would even think about her past.

To say the twins and Bee were upset was an understatement. They had downright protested against the decision anytime Prime would allow them a few kliks to talk.

As for herself, she just couldn't find the courage to argue against him, it was obvious why he was doing it, and she had nothing against it. Still it didn't mean she liked the idea of going to an all femme ship. Personally she preferred the rude mech conversations about who was strongest or who slagged who rather than the femme talk about which mech was hottest and how to roll them around your finger.

Ironhide seemed to be rather annoyed of his continuous training to be interrupted, he had been since the beginning trying to make her use the flamethrowers again, and ever since she did he seemed more eager to. But she refused to, saying it was just a last resort which she no longer intended to use.

On the good side of everything, she was relieved that she would no longer have to see her brother as a regular mech anymore; since they were going to be separated once more, it was best to leave things as they were, especially since this had been his choice. She really couldn't blame him.

The ship's door opened to reveal the slender and elegant features of the femmes, three of them standing there. At the front, the reddish pink commander, hands on her hips like she was demanding something, she was by far one of the most beautiful models to be found, and most mechs could easily fall for her. Behind her came two others, a blue femme, with a bit or a rougher appearance and on massive cannon as her right arm, probably their weapons specialist, and a light green femme with a simple feature, yet also elegant as the others. Femmes took much pride in their appearances, one more reason why AshBringer did not wish to join them.

Optimus stepped forward to greet them and took Elita's hand with as much care as only a lover would.

"Elita One, welcome to our headquarters. I hope your journey was safe?" The femme smiled up at him warmly as the two seemed to be entering their own world.

"Yes, thank you Optimus" she said removing her hand trying to regain her self control, in reality everyone knew how desperate the two were to hold each other.

If Optimus was sad he didn't show it. He turned in her direction and motioned for her to step up. AshBringer obediently did so, trying to ignore the saddening looks of her friends and staring straight ahead at her new commander. Elita stared back at her with undisguised surprise, giving her a once over but didn't say a thing. She too must have noticed how little she resembled a femme, despite not looking like a mech at the same time.

"This is AshBringer, your new recruit" Optimus said, putting a comforting hand her shoulder armour, it was encouraging, but it wouldn't be there once she left, she had to face her new commander on her own.

"It's a pleasure to meet you commander Elita One" The two femmes shook hands. She had to look up at her for she was much taller. Elita didn't offer any sort of sympathy, but she also wasn't nasty about it.

"You have a very unusual model, what is your speciality AshBringer?"

The smaller femme hesitated for a while, considering the question, but was saved the trouble to answer by Prime once more.

"She was still in training until now; her final configuration is still for her to decide." Elita gave him a look that made it clear they were having a bond conversation, and Optimus was definitely loosing.

"Still, you must be better at some skills than others?" she insisted turning back to the young femme with a softer look.

AshBringer nodded slightly, uncertain of herself.

"I'm good with stealth, Ironhide has been trying to get me to be a better shooter but I really don't like it" the said mech grunted in the background "and I suppose you could say I'm good with speed." Now there was a collective snort from the mechs behind her and if she could she would have blushed. Elita stared at them for a while confused.

"We'll talk about the rest of her training quick so you can leave." Optimus said, dismissing the younger femme, who was all too glad to go back to her friends.

Femmes had started coming out, coming to greet a few of the mechs now and then, Ironhide totally had it for the blue weapon specialist, and she was enjoying his hypnotized look.

"Primus I'm gonna hate it there…" she muttered once she was with her friends for probably the last time.

"I don't know…they're kinda cute…" sunny said staring diligently at a femme's aft who was passing by. Sideswipe elbowed him, making him grunt. "What?!"

"Get your processor out of the pit." He snapped turning back to the other two. "But seriously Ash maybe it won't be so bad. I mean you'll be with your own kind now, isn't that supposed to be a good thing?"

"What?! NO!" she spoke a little too loud for the surrounding mechanisms glanced at them for a few short kliks before going back to their conversations. "I don't like it! Its going to be a nightmare!"

"Oh look on the bright side! Maybe they'll give you a few tips and when you come back you'll have a prettier frame!" Sunstreaker said, all too happy about it. Ash gave him a murderous look that made him flinch away even though she was much smaller than him reaching just around his hip.

"Maybe he is right Ash" Bumblebee said a bit more carefully than the yellow twin. "Maybe there are things femmes can teach you that we can not."

"Oh so this is a gender preference now?"

"W-wasn't it from the beginning?" he asked uncertain.

Sighing she just made a motion to let it go and they fell quiet once more.

"You will come back though…won't you?" Sideswipe asked, making that pathetic pleading face that convinced no one.

"Of course I am! Pit if I'm staying with them I'd better be offline."

Bee hissed smacking her behind the head, forgetting about her helm spikes and injuring himself a bit in the process.

"Don't say that! We're at war! We shouldn't joke about being offline." She shrugged not really caring about the matter. "And you promised me we'd go through things together, so this time we're going through being separated together! Either you come back or we'll go and get you."

It was rare of Bumblebee to be demanding, and this was one of the very few occasions she knew of, yet it was for a good reason and all she could give him was an honest smile.

"Of course… wouldn't expect anything else."

At that time Elita's voice rang out.

"All femmes return to the ship, we're leaving in a few astro Kliks!" The reaction was general, femmes gasping and embracing mechs or saying good bye, clearly not wishing to leave but then hurrying off to the ship. "You too AshBringer."

She quickly glanced between the ship and her friends and tutors.

"Well…I guess this is it…" She made a quick gesture for the twins to duck down so she could hug them around the necks. After moments of shock they reacted by hugging her back, lifting her off the ground while doing so and making her laugh at it for a while then set her down again. She turned back to Bumblebee and couldn't help but feel like a gear got stuck inside her neck joint. The young bot seemed to be in the same predicament as the two hugged each other in a more conscious way.

"No matter what…I promise you, I'll come back bee. I won't leave you like everyone else" she said, her processor failing visibly.

"I know you will." He said, his processor having the same difficulty. "and I'll be waiting, now get going, I think Elita is done with waiting."

With some difficulty the two friends backed away from each other, and regreting it, she turned her back on them, and followed the femme commander into the ship. She wouldn't take her optics from the exit until it was firmly closed, separating her from her home once again.

"So…" Elita's sweet but commanding voice interrupted her state of loss as the ship's systems hummed online. "You and Bumblebee huh?"

"W-what?!" as usual her reaction was quick, she turned to look to her so fast the commander wondered how her neck didn't snap.

"You two, you like each other"

"Er…sure…if by that you mean as friends then yes."

"No…that wasn't what I meant."

"Then I'm afraid your mistaken commander. Bumblebee and I are best friends…that's all to it…I have… a responsibility towards him." She said the last words with a bit of effort, but deep down she knew the twins would keep him safe.

"I see…" the commander didn't seem convinced at all but let it slide for now. "Come, I want you to meet the crew, we have much to discuss about. And even more to fix over here" she said patting her shoulder plating. AshBringer wanted nothing more than to move away from her.

"I'm fine with the way I am if you don't mind…My mother designed this form and I'd like my upgrade to follow it if possible."

"Why would you want that? Doesn't it bother you the way you look? I assure you we have a very good femme with the frame designs."

"No. It doesn't bother me unless someone mentions about it." She said trying to sound as polite as possible even though she was gritting her dentals. "It's all I have left. So I'd like to keep it that way…besides I can't be as fast if I use one of your typical frames."

"You want to be fast?"

"I am fast." She retorted, now not managing to suppress her rudeness.

"How fast?" a grin spread across her faceplates.

"Fast enough. But I don't go to the maximum anymore unless I really have to."

"Is that so?" AshBringer didn't answer her; she just followed diligently, really what else could she do? She didn't know this ship; actually her experiences with ships were quite limited.

Soon another pair of doors opened and they were met with a whole group of femmes of all tones and colours, practically jumping on their commander to get a glimpse of the _little one_.

"All right all right! Everyone settle down! Lets not crowd her okay?" the blue femme from before said, positioning her arm cannon ever so threateningly.

AshBringer timidly stepped out from behind Elita where she had taken refuge from the horde of femmes and stared at them with much disbelief, they hadn't shown this excitement when they were outside…

"I'm sorry; it's been a long time since we last saw a youngling." This time it was the light green femme that had come with Elita and the weapon specialist when they landed. She held up her hand for Ash to shake, and she hesitantly did so. "The name's Moonracer."

"Right…AshBringer." For a moment she wondered if this femme was a racer, considering her name and all, but she didn't look much like one. The royal blue femme came up to them doing the same as Moonracer.

"Then name's Chromia, Ironhide asked me to finish his weapon training on you for him, apparently you have a very interesting choice of weapons on your arms" she groaned cursing Ironhide for never knowing when to keep quiet. To which the femme chuckled.

The same kept going on, every femme making an introduction to her, mostly mentioning their positions in the crew and if they were or not to finish her training. It kept pretty regular until the very last femme they had to push forward to meet her.

To put it simply, she was pretty, and by the looks of it should be around the same age, her armour was white and pink, and one would have to be a fool not to consider her a femme. She had a few dynamic features to her armour so she was probably light and fast, but more for the agile sort. She was definitely shy at the moment, for she kept fidgeting with her feet and looking at the ground like she was going to be punished or something.

An elder femme pushed her forwards slightly " Go on, introduce yourself " she whispered, but the femme kept giving them nervous glances, so she finally lost her patience and held up her own hand.

"Hey, the name's AshBringer. Don't worry I'm not going to hurt you or anything." The femme glanced towards her ever so quickly before taking her hand hesitantly.

"Arcee" yeah, her voice seemed just as sweet as her looks, but she had a feeling that wasn't all there was to the femme.

"See? That wasn't so hard was it?" the femme nodded. At first she thought she was going to back away but fortunately she didn't.

"You and Arcee will be training together and sharing your quarters for the time being. Since news of your…survival were quite abrupt." Elita said placing a hand on each femme's shoulders.

"Speaking of which" moonracer interrupted coming closer to the two. "I hope you don't mind but we don't have any files on you at all, none of the data centrals mentioned your creation day so we need to ask a few questions."

"Oh…" Ash said remembering why that was. "That's because I changed my designation. I used to be called Flamer before."

"Flamer?" the femme said trying to remember anyone that called their new ones such a name. "Who are your creators?"

"Oh um…" she hesitated for a moment, fidgeting with her fingers and looking away. "They aren't online anymore; their designations were HotHeel and Aquantine." Moonracer gave her a sympathic look, and from the corner of the optics she could see Arcee's shock, almost like she was seeing a dead shell instead of a living femme, which she wasn't at all.

"I'm sorry to hear that sweetspark. I've heard of those names before…" she commented dimming her optics in thought "Where was it…?"

"U-um…HotHeel was a racer in the golden ages." Arcee said, almost regretting doing so immediately as she shied away towards Elita. "And he was creator of the last racing champion Blurr."

To say she was surprised the femme knew such thing was an understatement, but of course she would know of it because of Blurr.

"Y-yeah…those are the ones…"

"So then… he's your brother?" she nodded not liking the look the femmes were giving her, they seemed about ready to pounce on her. "Now that you mention it…you do have some similar features…" Moonracer continued, examining her frame to its last millimetre.

"Yes…our femme creator made them for us; she wanted us to look partly like racers, even though she forbade us to be so."

"My my…so Blurr wasn't allowed to race?" one of the femmes asked a little too dramatically.

"Oh! No, he was allowed to, in fact father insisted on it." She said lifting up and arm for moonracer to investigate more thoroughly, by the looks of it she was a medic. "It was me and my sister who couldn't." The femme's attentions perked up at this, now seeming a whole lot more serious than before.

"You have a sister?" Elita asked stepping back into view, the pink femme staying close to her.

"Had…" she corrected sadly, dimming her optics and forgetting for a moment where she was. "We were twins…and we got into a bit of trouble because of the rules…long story short she's no longer among us." Their shoulders slumped and their expressions saddened, it seemed they had hopes to find more femmes.

"These flamethrowers…"Moonracer said, trying to move away from that gloomy mood. "Where on Cybertron did you get them? They couldn't have been easy to install…"

"Oh…right…I should probably warn you about those." At this the femme nearly jumped away from her as if expecting them to explode. "These, according to Ironhide were my father's. I didn't knew that until he told me though. When me and my sister got into…" she hesitated "not so legal fun, a mech got us these upgrades installed…I had no idea what the pit he was doing. Ratchet said they can't be removed or taken offline. Otherwise it can delete my memories or even kill me; this is because they are directly linked to my processor." She tapped the side of her helm for emphasis. "And there are some things that might trigger their primitive program sending me berserk so…" she shrugged, as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. The femmes however were looking at her with a new light. She quickly tried to reassure them "It's controllable most of the time though! It only happened once!"

Elita was the first to relax but seemed thoughtful and weary all the same. "This is odd though, why didn't Optimus let you stay with your brother then? I'm certain you would be better with him…even though you do look like you desperately need some femme training, no offense."

"He…it's a long story…"she was growing uncomfortable with all the staring and finally she seemed to realise that.

"Fine, come with me, Moonracer, Chromia you come as well. Flare up, your in charge of Arcee while I'm gone. Everyone else return to your posts, we have a long journey ahead."

And just like that everyone went in their own directions.

Her stay in Elita's office was long and painful, she had to report the entire thing more detailed and some things still hurt to tell. She hadn't even told Bumblebee she had a sister so she was already wondering if that been in any way, betrayal. Why hadn't she come out with the truth before she left? She felt horrible about it…

After a very long joor she was finally released, if you could call it that. Apparently there were some rules towards younglings. They weren't allowed to be alone on the ship unless they were in either the wash racks or their own quarters, which led her to having an all too cheerful chromia leading her to arcee's room.

The femme was all too happy about having a new student, especially after learning more about her FlameThrowers.

On instinct she memorized each hall and if the weapon specialist mentioned where headed where she would record that as well. It was typical to do so back in the races, since they never knew the racing line. Finally they came to a regular quarter's room door and she pressed to button to call for the young femme inside.

Allmost instantly they heard something crash inside and she chuckled.

"Arcee is a little nervous about you; she hasn't seen anyone around her age in a long time so go easy on her. She has a sweet spark." No sooner had she said this, the doors hissed open and the very nervous looking pink femme appeared.

"Ah! C-chromia, I wasn't expecting you guys so soon."

"Really? Sounds like you were busy making your room finally presentable." She flinched at that but smiled sheepishly.

The blue femme strode in gallantly, one could clearly see why she liked Ironhide, by the way she moved or inspected things to the last detail to make sure they were safe and weapon proof.

"Very nice…hope you start doing this everyday now kiddo." She said patting Arcee's helm gently.

Ash stared around, it looked pretty normal, a regular room, with a few too many random items here and there such as holopics, holovids, an old toy over the bed, some data pads, a few weapons on the shelves… well the list went on. Arcee was clearly missing something if she had the need to keep so many things.

"Well I'll be off now, you know the drill, if you need anything just call." Chromia said, leaving the two by themselves in the room.

* * *

Sorry that took so long; hope someone is still reading this…though I highly doubt it…

Arcee is a little different here because she is still young but with time she will develop to be the arcee we all know.


End file.
